Files Open Slow (yet again)

I know this has been touched on before but after doing a search, I couldn't
find any of the posts.

Ever since SW2004 (what I am currently using), opening files is a slowww
process. It doesn't seem to make that much difference if the files are
local or if they are located on the server. Prior versions of SW would open
even fairly large assemblies in a reasonable amount of time. But SW2004
seems to take approx. 50-75% longer. This isn't news to most of you.
You've probably experienced it yourselves.

But I just noticed something that I had never noticed before. When opening
a file that is still in a previous version (SW2003 or prior), it will open
very fast in SW2004, just like in previous releases. Once saved in SW2004
format, it becomes slow when opening this file in the future.

With that being said, it seems to me that SW2004 itself is not the problem.
It is capable of opening the files fast just like previous versions.
Instead it seems that something in the translation of the file to SW2004 is
what is causing files to open slowly. Like maybe some kind of "flawed" data
has been added to the files themselves during SW2004 translation that is
causing this slow down.

I just did a test and had some unexpected results. I opened my task manager
and switched to the network tab. I opened several assemblies that are
already in SW2004 format. Under the network utilization column, I am lucky
to get 2-5%. I then opened several assemblies that were still in SW2003 or
prior format. I would say that the average network utilization was between
15-30%. After I convert and re-open the files, the network utilization goes
back down to 2-5%. I am by far a network guru, and I truly don't know what
network utilization means exactly. But this has to be a very significant
factor, right?

Anyone with more knowledge about this subject care to comment?

 

You must have a very fast server and network.

No sh*t!

Look at the file sizes before and after conversion. The SW04 files are much
bigger. The explanation I got (on this newsgroup, naturally, probably from
Mr. Eaton) was that SW04 stores additional Parasolid information every few
features in your tree. The idea is to make it faster when you roll back in
the tree. It only has to rebuild from the last saved Parasolid data. The
down side is that every time you save or load a file it has to save all of
this extra data, slowing down the process. My colleagues and I find this to
be a really bad trade-off, but other people don't seem to mind so much.

Good deduction, but there is nothing flawed in the data. The flaw is in the
idea of storing all of that data in the first place.

I'm not a network guru either, but our system administrator told me that it
means you are getting 2-5% of your networks capacity. If you have a 100 Mbps
network, you are getting 2-5 Mbps transfers. With the SW03 files you were
getting 15-30 Mbps transfers.

Seems like it to me. My first thought was that your server was spending the
time saving the files to its disk, but the disk transfer rate should be
orders of magnitude faster than the network rate, so that doesn't seem like
a good answer. (Although my disk light stays lit for a long time when I am
saving bloated SW04 files locally.)

Yes, we would both love to know!

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

I know AntiVirus can make a huge impact. Where I worked, we had Norton
installed on the server and local computers. The effect was the files
were getting scanned twice on each access.

We added SWX files to the list of 'safe' files and speed was increased
dramatically.

 

Thanks for posting this! I have asked our system administrator if we can get
SW files put on the safe list. Here's hoping that he agrees and we can also
see a dramatic speed increase.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

regarding files access and scanners, I've got sldprt, sldasm files in my
exclude list, are there others?( temp files etc) Any other speed ups?

RAD

 

You must have a very fast server and network.

It is just a 100 Mbps network I think. It helps that there are only 6
workstations on the entire network and not that many of them even use
bandwidth of any significance (except for me of course). The server sits
about 15 feet away from me which is also a bonus.

I just did another surprising test. If I open a previously "unfrag'ed"
SW2003 file, save it in SW2004 format, then unfrag it again after
converting, the file size changes very little. In fact, on some of my tests
the file size actually got smaller. I basically only open unfrag'ed files.
I unfrag many times a day. Generally after I close files in SW, I will
unfrag the folder that I am working from. So file size can not be the
culprit here.

My point to my test results that I posted was that SW2003 format files seem
to transfer across the network at a faster rate of speed than files in
SW2004 format. This is what appears to be happening anyway even though I am
using SW2004 to open both formats. That is what is blowing my mind. My
guess is (being kind-of dumb in this area), there is something about the
converted data that causes it for some reason to transfer slower through the
data path. Course, I could be way off base here ya know. Just seems
strange.

 

I tried this a some time ago and either I have not done it correctly, or it
didn't help any.

 

I did a test on this theory and there was atleast a 30% time savings with SW
files not being checked. You may not have seen a significant savings if
your server is checking outgoing files. You may want to talk to your IT
about it.

Corey

 

I am my own IT (unless it is really deep) and I am very limited on
knowledge. Our server is what I believe is called a Samba server. It is
basically just a storage facility. Only the internal server software runs
on the server box itself and it has no AV. Therefore there is no way that
the server is scanning outgoing files. This is controlled on the individual
workstations AV. I set mine to skip SW files a while back but did not see a
reduction in load times.

 

To name a few:

..sldprt
..sldasm
..slddrw
..swj
..prtdot
..asmdot
..drwdot
..sldbomtbt
..sldwldtbt
..sldholtbt
..sldlfp
..slddrt
..sldrevtbt
..sldmat

You could also do .swp files, but they are probably best scanned.
In addition SW loads dlls from the install directory quite frequently.

 

Our system administrator just removed the SW .dll files from the list of
files checked. I haven't noticed any big difference yet, but I haven't been
working much in SW lately.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

This is very peculiar. I did some tests when we first noticed how slow SW
files were to load and save and found that the file size increased very
significantly. I'm pretty sure that I ran EcoSqueeze on the old and new
files before comparing the size. The one thing I did see was that there was
a large variation in the increase in size. Usually large files got much
bigger and small files got only slightly bigger. Unfortunately, I can't
locate my notes and I don't think I have the old files to play with any
more.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

It turns out that SW files were not being checked anyway, so the AV software
is probably not to blame for our slow file load and save times.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"