Autocad Networking Perfomance Slow with x-refs

[A49ers4009342017]

I work at a small business with 4 computers running autocad 2008 and cadworx 2008. All of the computers are connected to a Gigabit network switch which is then connected to a NAS. The dwg files can have somewhere of 120 x-refs, and whenever I open the xref manager the computers then lags whenever I try and edit x-ref in place and also with saving. The problem doesn't happen if the dwg files are on the computer itself and not on the NAS. What is my best solution. If you need more information let me know.

[cadtag]

What are the specs on the NAS? model, mfgr, processor, OS, RAM, ethernet adaptor (number of and speed) drive and drive type, RAID configuration ?

Since that would appear to be the bottleneck..... the question is pobably what can you do to that device to speed it up? (example: does its adaptor even support gigabit speed? )

[A49ers4009342017]

The NAS is a iomega home media drive with gigabit ethernet, the desktop is win7 xeon cpu 2.53 GHz, 4gb of ram, with gigabit ethernet to gigabit switch, the switch has 4 other computers on it (3 other computers just have ethernet), as well as a printer and modem, I'm honestly not sure as the Raid configuration. The speed seems to be good at all times if I have the files on the computer directly. If the files are on the NAS the speed seems fine until I open the x-ref dialog box or the properties box. The main file is only 2Mb and the reference files are at max 250KB. I have purged and audited every reference file as well as cleanup the scales. I guess I'm confused at to why I only have problems if I open the Xref dialog box or properties box when the files are on the NAS.

[cadtag]

I'm a bit suprised Iomega is still in business!

OK, no RAID possible, that only supports a single SATA II drive, and only comes with 256Mb of RAM. the processor is a low power ARM chip, and the OS is a 'unique' thing from EMC. Doesn't look like there's much you can do at that end...... It looks like that was optimized for serving out streaming media.

On the Acad side, go to Options, Open & Save tab, and try changing the options for XRefs there --

Or, look into a more robust, tunable, and capable NAS. Drobo comes to mind, and there are others.

[dgorsman]

120 XREFs is a little on the high side, especially when dealing with the conventional 3D solids in CADWorx. CADWorx also processes data from XREFs for line isolation, clash detection, continuity checking, ISOGEN generation, and so on (not sure which version each of those showed up in), and if turned on will refresh whenever you do (some function here).

I wouldn't recommend doing an in-place edit of CADWorx XREFs.

[Hammer.John.J]

We found QNAP devices to be very solid, we started with Drobo's but they weren't robust enough.