Network causing AutoCAD performance issues?

[zride91]

I am CONSTANTLY getting complaints about AutoCAD performance at our office. I get users working on files over the LAN complaining that AutoCAD is RANDOMLY performing poorly, there is hesitation modifying objects with grips, hesitation when entering commands, the cursor skips all over the screen, etc... I am hoping to get some experienced input...

Our firm consists of 8 offices. We communicate over the WAN through riverbed steelheads. I do not think the WAN has anything to do with our problem. We have about 60 AutoCAD/AutoCAD MEP/Civil 3D users, 30 Revit users, and 30 MicroStation users. The majority of our project files are stored on a server in our main office. In addition to the AutoCAD, Revit, and MicroStation project files, the server is also used as a dumping ground for user and department files (of all sorts). Each of our offices has it's own server, which some regionally specific projects get stored. I would say ~80% of our project files get stored on the main office server. We have another server at the main office which we house our license managers. Another server at the main office houses the support files for the CAD programs.

I've spent weeks searching online for AutoCAD performance, I've tried everything I can that I've found, nothing makes a sure difference.

I was talking to a network guy (at another company) the other day, and he said there may just be too much traffic for one server to handle. Could this be the case? If so how do other firms break up where/how their project files are stored?

Even though we've had performance issues with AutoCAD 2008 products, AutoCAD 2011 products seem to be worse off.

Are my users just expecting too much from AutoCAD???

Thanks.

[JSelf]

I have had problems like the ones you are describing in the past and it turned out that if I turned off all of the snaps that required a calculation to be made by the program things started moving again....try running autocad with just Endpoint, Midpoint, Center and Quadrant snaps on. The users can type the snaps in that aren't selected.

Another thing that I have noticed is that having too many saved layer states can cause problems, there are tools to delete layer states if you search the forum.

Lastly, if you have support files that reference the network then localize them, including automatic save paths.

I'm sure there are other things to try but those are what pop to mind.

Good luck,
Jason

[Spenner]

I am CONSTANTLY getting complaints about AutoCAD performance at our office. I get users working on files over the LAN complaining that AutoCAD is RANDOMLY performing poorly, there is hesitation modifying objects with grips, hesitation when entering commands, the cursor skips all over the screen, etc... I am hoping to get some experienced input...

Our firm consists of 8 offices. We communicate over the WAN through riverbed steelheads. I do not think the WAN has anything to do with our problem. We have about 60 AutoCAD/AutoCAD MEP/Civil 3D users, 30 Revit users, and 30 MicroStation users. The majority of our project files are stored on a server in our main office. In addition to the AutoCAD, Revit, and MicroStation project files, the server is also used as a dumping ground for user and department files (of all sorts). Each of our offices has it's own server, which some regionally specific projects get stored. I would say ~80% of our project files get stored on the main office server. We have another server at the main office which we house our license managers. Another server at the main office houses the support files for the CAD programs.

I've spent weeks searching online for AutoCAD performance, I've tried everything I can that I've found, nothing makes a sure difference.

I was talking to a network guy (at another company) the other day, and he said there may just be too much traffic for one server to handle. Could this be the case? If so how do other firms break up where/how their project files are stored?

Even though we've had performance issues with AutoCAD 2008 products, AutoCAD 2011 products seem to be worse off.

Are my users just expecting too much from AutoCAD???

I take it you store all the licences on one server? If so why don’t you spread them about across the offices we had a few problems where I work. Previously people were having a few problems being able to gain a licence due to the network timing out; we overcome this by spreading the licences cross the offices.

Have you tried the Performance Monitor tool you can get from Autodesk Labs, see attached link?
http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/acad_perf_mon/.

What sort of specification are the machines you’re running? We are running AutoCAD 2010 and Revit Structure 2010 and seams to run ok on most machines.

I have found that when your running AutoCAD, don’t have the layer manager open all the time I slows CAD down. If you do switch off the status column that slows it down again. Even simply closing AutoCAD down and restarting it every now and then helps.

Gareth

[zride91]

Thank you for your responses Jason and Gareth.

To give you an idea of things I've tried from searching this issue online, I've tried the following:

- Updated graphics driver, set graphics acceleration to hardware graphics
- disabled SNAPS (not OSNAP)
- set SORTENTS=0
- set SELECTIONCYCLING=0
- set TOOLTIPS=0
- set HYPERLINKOPTIONS=No
- set ROLLOVERTIPS=0
- set HPQUICKPREVIEW=0
- set QPMODE=0
- set SHOWLAYERUSAGE=0
- set NAVVCUBEDISPLAY=1
- set TRANSPARENCYDISPLAY=0
- set ISAVEPERCENT=50
- set LAYERDLGMODE=0
- set LIMCHECK=0
- In Vista, I have disabled the Aero display by setting the display to Vista Basic
- In Vista, I have disabled auto tuning
- Turned off Digital Signatures

Our machines are Dell Precision Workstations with 64-bit Vista SP2, Xeon dual core processors with at least 2.5 GHz, 6GB of RAM, and NVIDIA Quadro FX video cards.

I had not tried that performance monitor, I will take a look at that and put it on a few user's machines ;)

We at one point had redundant license servers for our Autodesk products, but that turned out to be a NIGHTMARE, so we changed it back to have all our licenses back on one server again.

We do have our support files on the network. I will try to make a local copy for one of my users to try, but I don't think that is going to help. One of my users was copying his working file localy for a few days, when he did this, he had NO problems, when he went back to work on the files stored on the network, he ran into issues again.

We have recently tried excluding .dwg, .dwl, and .dwl2 extensions from our workstation virus scans, but this has not appeared to make a difference either.

It feels as if the problem is with the working files on the network...

[Spenner]

The machines you’re currently running a good spec, so I would say it’s not the machines that’s causing the problem.

Do you delete all the .bak files every day? I know we had a few problems here as they fill up the servers as the file size is the same as the drawing.

I know it’s probably a long short but why don’t you try and search on “YouTube” , I know Autodesk have a put loads of videos on there. I have seen something related to network licences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyqjlttjDLg (http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyqjlttjDLg)

[zride91]

Thanks again Gareth! Could network license connection cause poor performance when already in and working in AutoCAD??

Theoretically is I have one of my users borrow a license, that should eliminate any license manager interaction, right? I may give that a quick try...

I'll take a look into the licensing a bit further. I don't know if the link you provided was suppose to go somewhere specifically in youtube, but it did not appear to work, I just got a blank page. I'll dig around on Youtube though and see what i can find.

Thanks again for your time and suggestions.

[jaberwok]

Could network license connection cause poor performance when already in and working in AutoCAD??

AutoCAD checks for a licence every few seconds so, yes.

[Strobe53]

Dwahl, sounds like your Steelhead devices are not doing their job. My firm uses these devices and sometimes their buffer is exceeded and they stop optimizing network traffic and fail over to bypass mode. The problems you describe is exactly what happens on my systems when a Steelhead has a fault. Remember, you have to have a Steelhead at both ends of your connection and both devices must be working properly. Also be sure to disable digital signatures, this Autodesk feature kills WAN response times and defeats the Steelhead solution.

You may want to visit the Riverbed web site and search for AutoCAD or DWG performance issues. Good luck.

[dougramstad]

Don't forget "Hardware Accelerator" ON. Makes a big difference.

[B Stewart]

Maybe this could help?

http://www.networknet.nl/apps/wp/archives/647

Bob


Edit: Oops. Just read mike.stokes reply.

[stuart.dickenson]

Simple steps, have you tried running the machine(s) locally (unplugged from the network)? If so do you experience the same/better/worse speed from CAD? If the speed increases when handling files locally we can assume that its a network issue.

So we move on to:
What spec is the server running the storage/Licence files? What speed is the network (i.e. 10mbps/100mbps/1000mbps) connection? Are the CAD machinces in a seperate network or VLAN? Has the admin imposed a bandwidth limit within your network to even out the throughput?

stu

[ptrudeau]

We have recently started running into similar issues. We're not on a WAN, but the addition of Win7 machines in combination with a server upgrade started generating so much DNS traffic that it was interrupting network flow.

You need to get some hard data on what traffic is flowing through your network.

Good luck,

Pat

[cohortor]

We have had the same issue in our environment (WAN around AU and Overseas) when we rolled out A2010. Autocad 2010 was sticky and did not perform very well. I would recommend you disable the InfoCenter. You can do this by editing the Autocad regkey InfoCenterOn – default value is one – set it to zero – this will disable the infocenter from being displayed on the top right hand corner of your application.

InfoCenterOn = 0

re. refer to some other tips http://lowercase0.wordpress.com/

[Ken Cover]

What type of network are you running? We have similar issues both through WAN and LAN.

[JackofAllCAD]

I know this thread is a little long in the tooth, but did you ever solve the performance problems you were having? Reason I'm asking is that your issues describe to a "T" what we are experiencing. The description of your company profile, machine specs, network configuration, Steelhead appliance use, licensing scenario and brands and types of software used are almost identical to ours. We have been looking at the problem from both the PC side and network side with no significant resolution. We have also experienced problems with design files going into "Read Only" during performance slowdowns. We have tried Windows & OS tweaks, replaced network switches, upgraded servers all to no avail. If you can shed ANY further insight I would greatly appreciate it. We have also engaged Autodesk as well as our vendor with no good answers there either. Thanks in advance.

[zride91]

Wow! I never saw any of these later posts! I don't know how I missed them. Thanks for all the replies, I have a lot of new things to try :)

j.pleunik, We never really did completely resolve this, little things here and there helped out here and there.

One of the larger complaints was performance with hatch patterns, we disabled the hatch context ribbon and restored the hatch double click for edit as it was in 2008. this was done with the procedues found in the attached documents (taken from other sites)

Another big complaint is first time MTEXT is used there is a large delay, after that, MTEXT works fine, haven't found a solution for this yet.

We do have issues where a user will be working on a file from a regional office to another regional office, and their overall performance is very bad, much worse than if the file was stored at our headquarters or on their local drive. I believe we have just assumed this to be due to the smaller network lines at the smaller offices. Usually when a user experiences very bad performance in these cases, I can call IT and they will indicate some large event (like video conferencing or someone travelling pulling all their e-mails to that regional office) is occuring.

I did mess with the licensing a little to extend timeouts which i found I may have set the value too high which may have caused some issue too. I have yet to set the timeouts back down to see if it helped.

Thank you for the response j.pleunik!

[j_follett_88]

Strictly from a computer stand point.
- Make sure Automatic Back up files are saved locally. (manual back up on server)
- Make your licences on your Domain Controllers. ( since you have this server made already)
-make a replicated file server. there is no reason you can't have 2 servers beside each other balancing traffic ( make them on a private network switch if you have to this will make them replicate with less traffic between each other.

- Localize blocks within LAN (Local area network) even if its just off some ones computer in the office.
-make sure your main server only runs file services. email servers/website services slow down the process drastically.

that's what I got for you,

[bkanther377871]

Well this is kind of old, but we have recently ran into problems here in our office.

When upgrading from our cruddy 1gb switch to a 10gb switch. you think everything would run faster. More throughput.

However it caused serious problems with Autocad Civil 3d 2012. Opening files became unbearably slow, saving files became unbearably slow.

Any solutions out there?

[kumar67251066]

We use AutoCAD 2009 (network-based licensing) and we noticed similar issues relating to excessive chatter between the client & licence server (about 150 packets totaling 15,000 bytes every minute). Interestingly this chatter continues even if a licence were borrowed.

Further, I found that this problem does not exist in AutoCAD 2012.

Also, I might have a solution to this for the 2009 situation. On the client side, AutoCAD 2009 runs a service called "Autodesk Network Licensing Service"(AdskNetSrv.exe). It appears that disabling or uninstalling this service does not interfere with license acquisition, etc in any way. Importantly, it reduces traffic considerably (to about 3 packets totaling about 450 bytes per minute). You can uninstall this service from command line (your path may be different):

C:\> "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\Service\AdskNetSrv.exe" –uninstall


If something goes wrong, you can always reinstall the service with the "-install" switch.

I am unclear as to what this service (or "dis-service") this Autodesk Network Licensing Service is supposed to be doing.


Please let me know if anyone finds any issues when this service is uninstalled.


Thanks,
kmxrw3

[brent.morris373646]

I was wondering if I could get everybody's help.
Our company has a the same issue right now with any flavor and any version of AutoCAD and it seems to perform slow on our WAN and with all of my research I have found something interesting with the versions 2012 and 2013.
I used two programs to actually watch what AutoCAD does locally and over the network and I was astounded by how many program files AutoCAD looks for in the wrong place, so my research shows why it takes so long to just startup AutoCAD and why it takes so long to open, save, and print over a network.
The two programs I used was Wireshark http://www.wireshark.org/ and Process Monitor http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx and they both helped me show what was going on locally and across our network.
For example when starting Civil 3D 2012 the process Acad.exe was looking for a plotter driver called hlr10.hdi and it looked for it in 34 different folders looking for it and this wasn't the only file it was looking for it was looking for fonts, *.dll, *.arx, *.lsp, this list goes on for a while but anyways my main point is that AutoCAD is roughly looking for about 20-50 different type of files in about 20-50 different folder locations and it can't find them therefore wasting a lot of time looking for files in the wrong place, now you take that times 80 users over a WAN and now I understand why it's slow.

I would love it if some of you could download Process Monitor and capture what AutoCAD does locally while just starting up, opening a file, saving a file, printing, and exiting AutoCAD and I would be curious if you get the same results of the process=acad.exe, operation=createfile, result=name not found. You can set a filter to only show this to make it easier to read.
I used Wireshark to watch activity over our WAN but Process Monitor did the same thing but also captures what your local computer is doing also.
If other users get the same results of AutoCAD looking for all of these files locally and/or over the network this might explain slow AutoCAD performance and will help me with a support case I have with Autodesk right now.

If anybody has any questions on how to use either of those programs let me know and I would be more than willing to help out.

Thanks
Brent Morris

[dgorsman]

If you look closely, I think you will find the order of folders searched will match the order of the support file search path. Its a fine balancing act - putting the frequently searched for items at the top of the list so they are found quickly, while making sure the right ones are found first.