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Slow Hatch


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Hey everyone.

 

I know this has probably been asked a thousand times before, but I am having some irritation with AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT 2013. Our Engineer and I work with the same drawings, but I use LT because of price. And both CAD and LT have the same issue.

 

Basically, when we click on hatches, specifically Sand hatch, AutoCAD lags for a few seconds. Every single time we select a hatch we get this lag. I have already done as much as I can to optimize our systems, but we cannot get that lag to go away.

 

Our PCs are identical:

 

AMD FX-8120 @ 3.1 GHz

16.0 GB Dual-Channel DDR3

Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 Motherboard

2048MB GeForce GTX 550 Ti (EVGA)

2 TB Sata3 HDDs

Windows 7 Professional

 

We are really not sure what could be causing the lag other than a slow Video Card, but as LT does not even have any 3D capabilities, and we are only using 2D drawings anyway, I don't see how that could be the issue.

 

Do you guys have any ideas?

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Hatches are sometimes worse than 3D. Are there a lot of Hatches? Are they far from 0,0,0? What is the Hatch scale?

 

Can you post a .dwg?

 

What settings have you adjusted?

 

Is the Ribbon on?

 

HPQUICKPREVIEW = ON/OFF ?

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I am not allowed to post a DWG, but this is on all drawings, no matter the size or scale. The drawings range from a 6' x 6' building to a 14' x 45' Building. There is no difference in the lag.

 

The Ribbon is ON, by explicit order of the Lead Engineer. "It is used to often to turn off." However, in testing, I have turned it off temporarily and see no difference.

 

HPQUICKPREVIEW is also on as we use it every time we create a hatch. But I am not talking about using the HATCH command, although there is some lag there as well. I am talking about single clicking on a hatch that is already drawn.

 

EDIT: And as far as Settings, I have been scouring Google off and on all year trying every tweak I can find and nothing seems to help. At this point I am willing to try anything offered, even things I may have already tried. I do not remember every command I tried.

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Can you strip down the drawing to just some troublesome hatches?

 

Do you have the latest certified drivers from Autodesk?

 

Well, as I said, this is with EVERY Drawing. We have used Sand Hatch for years, but it is creating this Lag.

And we have GeForce 550 Ti, not a Quaddro card, so there are no Certified Drivers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have the same problem with HATCH . But it just happens when the scale is so big . I can not do any urban planning project now , 'cause of this issue . any one can help?

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  • 4 months later...

I have this problem and have researched and found the cause.

Using procmon.exe to watch AutoCAD for errors when hatching; I was able to determine that when a hatch is placed or edited AutoCAD searches every folder location in the support files path, every user directory (My Documents, User/AppData, etc) as well as every active AutoCAD folder (the current working directory, any xref directories etc.) for *.pat (Hatch pattern file). It does this even after it finds the correct acad.pat (or acadlt.pat) it still looks in all directories until it gets a "file not found error" then it checks the next directory. This causes alot of directory parsing and waiting until AutoCAD responds by making the hatch command (or edit) active.

 

I have found no way to remedy this.

 

I have significantly reduced the lag caused by removing any unnecessary paths from the Support File Path (config) as well as copying the acad.pat file to every location that Autocad looks for it. It takes less lag to look and find than to look and not find, but it will still look in all places.

 

It appears to be poor coding on AutoDesk's part, or a necessary evil?

 

Hope this helps some.

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I've used a number of versions of AutoCAD over a number of years and have yet to encounter a slow hatching problem. I don't buy your reasoning and I don't see any need to copy acad.pat to every location it would/could possibly search.

 

Are you working on a network or standalone?

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Standalone install, files are on network shares.

 

It has happened since upgrading from AcadLT 2008 to AcadLT 2012 and still occurs in AcadLT2013.

 

It was driving me crazy last year. Procmon.exe clearly showed AutoCAD looking everywhere in support and all local directories (pertaining to autocad and user). Even after it found the *.pat file it still parsed all directories and either errored as *.pat not found, or found it and continued to look in all remaining directories. All the while it was parsing the cursor/cross hairs was paused sometimes longer than 2 seconds.

 

It is possible that there was an hatch pattern in the drawing that was not referenced in the acad(lt).pat files but even with a clean install and fresh drawing it still happens.

 

This happens when placing new hatch (minor) and when editing existing hatch by double click (much longer).

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You may be on to something with the unreferenced hatch pattern. A fresh install would not solve the problem. Does this happen in every drawing or a select few?

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All drawings , but the severity depends on the "weight" of the drawing. More pronounced with the ribbon on, as the longest pause is when it parses to load hatch files when the ribbon changes to the hatch functions.

 

If you would like to research yourself.. get procmon.exe and set the filter to ignore all but autocad errors. Let it run the the side and start hatching stuff, if you have the problem you will know immediately as pages of errors will scroll when using hatch.

 

Also I am not claiming that everyone has this problem. I can just definitely relate to the OP as I experience the same problem and resulting lag. I am not telling everyone they should copy their hatch pattern files everywhere. I am saying that after experiencing the problem, I intelligently troubleshot the problem and found the cause. The workaround is sloppy but removes 70-80% of the lag I experience and makes it bearable.

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My system works fine given the short search path list I have since I work standalone. It could be that your "paths" are too long. I believe there is a maximum character count one should not exceed.

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Yes, I have experienced the long support path woes as well. I think the limitation is the length of the registry keys created. Not the problem in this situation as all support paths are short now.

 

I am currently running a fresh computer and fresh AcadLT 2013 install, the problem exists.. If anyone is interested; I can take some logs from procmon later today and post them.

 

I'm not looking for a solution. I was just interested in sharing my experience for the benefit of others who are experiencing this as well, not those who are not having the problem.

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If I were in your position I would be looking for a solution because it would make me very frustrated working with a drawing utilizing hatch patterns that cause those kinds of delays.

 

Are you current with service pack 1.1?

 

What antivirus program are you running? Some are known to be very aggressive when it comes to analyzing files. Have you tried temporarily disabling your antivirus program and testing a drawing?

 

Do you use custom hatch patterns? If so, what is their source?

 

Have you tried running standalone and pointing AutoCAD at acad.pat on your hard drive?

 

What are the specs on your hardware?

 

What OS are you running?

 

What is a typical file size you are dealing with?

 

Are these drawings strictly 2D or a 2D/3D combination?

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  • 2 months later...

I'm having the same issue. When I invoke the hatch command, select or deselect a hatch, and on each zoom step while a hatch is selected, I get several seconds of lag.

 

I checked out Process Monitor. The lag is much longer while procmon is running, but I'm assuming this is overhead due to the logging process.

 

Selecting or deselecting a hatch object generates ~4000 file system events on my machine. Almost all of these are repetitions of the same sequence of about 30 events over and over. First it tries and fails to access acad.pat in C:\Users\username\Documents, which is not in any of my search paths. Then it tries the folder where the currently open file is saved and fails. Then it starts checking my support paths. It fails on the first (on a networked drive), which is correct, but succeeds on the second (C:\users\username\AppData\...). It does not continue to check my other search paths. Instead the process repeats and it checks my documents folder again.

 

The activity in the documents folder is a little odd I guess, but the massive repetition is odder. In any case it's not a smoking gun. It's impossible to infer much from this without intimate knowledge of AutoCAD's internals.

 

Any other theories?

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P.S. -

AutoCAD 2013 SP2

Dell Precision T1600

3.3GHz Xeon

4 GB memory

Windows 7 SP1

NVIDIA Quadro 600

McAfee antivirus

 

File sizes range from 300K to 2.5MB. All 2D. The hatch I was testing with was a solid hatch.

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And the hatching is done on its own separate layer?

 

Have you done a purge and audit on the drawing?

 

Have you run the Overkill command on the drawing?

 

Is hardware acceleration enabled?

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The hatching is on a separate layer.

 

I have audited (no errors) and purged (two unused layers and two unused linetypes is all).

 

I ran overkill, and it did remove some duplicate linework, but the hatch lag persists.

 

Hardware acceleration is enabled.

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This particular file is 1800KB. There are two xrefs, but they are unloaded.

 

If I start a new file and create a hatch I get the same behavior.

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