Is GM V23.0 running slower because of Undo feature?

CarrickCon

G'day GM'ers,

I was wondering if it was just me, but has anybody else noticed a significant slowing down of even simple GM commands in V23.0 when compared to say V18.0? I've been using both versions recently on similar spec PC's (Windows 10, Core i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz with 16 GB RAM) and noticed that V23.0 is noticeably slower and was wondering if it was due to the introduction of the "Undo" feature?

If this is the case, is there a default setting that can be checked/unchecked to take it back to pre-V23.0 "Undo" setting and improved speed? If not, I think there should be as even simple commands are becoming painfully slow...

I'd appreciate other people's thoughts on this.

Ta,

/al

CarrickCon

Hi @JeffH@BMG

Thanks for your reply and for taking the time to investigate this...

I did what you suggested; I installed V18.2 on my desktop and did a direct comparison between it and V23.1 by timing how long it took to draw a ten vertex polyline ending with a right click overtop of the trial/simple workspace that I sent previously.

Guess what - on my desktop PC the performance of V18.2 was now almost as slow as V23.1 (avg. of three trails of each version yielded V18.2 = 31.1 secs vs. V23.1 = 37.3 secs). Previously when doing the same task using V18.2 on my laptop there was no discernible delay i.e. the yellow polyline was instantly rendered with each mouse click, so time was only the 4-5 seconds it took to draw the line.

Consequently I thought the problem might be with the settings as there have been no changes to the hardware of my desktop PC since I started noticing a slow down with GM a few versions ago.

So I painstakingly compared every single setting between V18.2 on my laptop and V23.1 on my desktop and made maybe two or three very minor changes (they were so banal, I can't even remember what they were) but, hey presto! V23.1 is now flying on my desktop and the rendering lag has completely gone away. I'm a happy camper! 😁

I have no idea how that happened, but in the words of the great man “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe"!

Ta,

/al

JeffH@BMG

Hi,

I haven't noticed any significant slowing down; but Undo will, in some cases, entail overhead. Are there any specific operations that you're noticing this on?

In any case, you can open the the Undo Manager dialog (Edit / Manage Undo/Redo...) and configure which types of operations may be redone, as well as the maximum number of undos that are remembered. iyou can set that to 0.

Hope that this helps. Cheers,

~Jeff

CarrickCon

Hi Jeff,

I've noticed it mostly when working with line work/vectors e.g. selecting vertices, creating lines, creating points, creating areas from lines and vice versa, zooming in and out - basic things like that with Digitizer/Edit and /Create tools.

I thought it had to do with having large/detailed elevation grids and aerial imagery files in the background, but it doesn't make any difference when I unload them. It has become so slow that I now do a lot of my linework creation in AutoCAD and import into GM as a dxf/dwg.

I also have a historical license for GMV18.0 and when I run it, it is noticeable faster when doing same commands/working with same workspaces. That is why I thought the V23.0 "Undo" feature had something to do with running slower as GM has to remember each operation (up to max number specified) so that they can be un-done if required.

I'll try as suggested with the Undo Manager dialog box and set number of operations to zero and report back...

Cheers,

/al

CarrickCon

Hi Jeff,

Unfortunately setting the Undo Manager max number of "undos" to zero made absolutely no difference i.e. V23.1 has become almost unworkably slow, while V18.1 is fine when making simple operations. I tried taking two little video clips on my phone to demonstrate what I'm talking about (zipped to 27.8 MB) but I can't seem to upload them to this Forum, so I've sent them to Dropbox here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7n2o9wo8eyi6c0z/GM%20Speed%20Demo%20Videos.zip?dl=0

What they show is that when I just do a point to point to point freehand line draw over top of the attached workspace in V18.1 on my laptop it takes about 6 seconds to draw a line with approximately eight vertices. When I attempt this in V23.1 on my desktop PC it takes about 46 seconds! I've attached screengrabs of both specs and you will see that my desktop has the higher spec and should outperform my laptop?

I've had every version of GM since V17.0 and this dramatic slow down in speed occurred around switch from V21 to V22 I'd say and V23 has just continued the trend.

I haven't noticed any slow down in V23 when doing difficult calculations e.g. projection shifts, volume calculations, creating elevation grids etc. It just seems to be things that I'd call "live graphic display" such as drawing lines, selecting, editing and creating lines/areas/points and using the measuring tool (oh man that is impossibly slow!) etc. I can't be the only person who has noticed this?

Your help or comments from others would be greatly appreciated, because for me this speed issue is really taking the shine off what is otherwise an awesome piece of software.

I'm now back to using V18.1 for all my work...☹️

Cheers,

/al

Laptop Spec Screenshot.jpg

Desktop PC Spec Screenshot.jpg

Demo workspace 220722.zip

JeffH@BMG

Sorry, was away for a few days.

So I loaded your dataset onto my work machine, which is a bit, but not much, newer/faster than yours (Core I7-6700K @ 4.00GHz, 4 Cores, 8 Logical Processors), with the same amount of memory (16GB). Currently showing less available physical memory and available virtual memory than you are. I opened up 23.1 and digitized a number of lines with many vertices, with Undo enabled. I experienced no rendering slowdown that I could discern, much less anything like you're showing in your video. No difference with Undo enabled or disabled. Even tried tracing a line; no slowdown there. Using Process Explorer, I noted that the memory footprint of 23.1 was somewhat, but not drastically, larger than that of GM 18, without and then with the the workspace loaded and digitized lines added (actually had them both versions loaded at the same time), but no surprise there.

This is a bit of a mystery to me. Have you tried GM 18 on your desktop, and if so, is it experiencing the same slowdown there, or is it zippy, like it is on on your laptop?

Best regards,

~Jeff

gcyx

Hi CarrickCon If you have the Geographic Calculator module enabled try turning it off. otherwise selecting or clicking on any vector data in the view will cause the view to freeze for a few seconds.

CarrickCon

HI @gcyx thanks for your suggestion, but I don't have the GeoCalc module, so I'm pretty sure its not that!

Cheers,

/al

JeffH@BMG

Hi again --

I talked with Mike about this, and verified my belief that in most cases, including the one you show in your video, the overhead of Undo would be minimal and shouldn't be noticeable. Seeing as how you're running a different version on each of two separate machines, it seems like we're trying to compare apples to oranges. The System Information summary for your desktop tells me that that system is a bit long in the tooth, but I had until very recently been using a desktop of about the same vintage to do Global Mapper development, including 23.1; it was slow in builds, but I never saw any lagging like your video shows, even when working on debug builds, which are generally a lot slower than release builds.

My suspicion is that something is awry with your desktop, as that's where the problem is showing up, and I'd be curious as to whether 18.1 is acting up there as well. Or, I guess, conversely, whether 23.1 works fine on your laptop. Don't know whether you'd have licensing issues that prevent you from trying either; in that case, you should probably get onto tech support (https://www.bluemarblegeo.com/technical-support/) to help sort that out.

Best regards,

~Jeff

Boyd

I had a look at your video. Just so I understand.... are you saying that was the fastest you could draw the polygon in the v23 video? If so, I agree it has something to do with your computer. I run Globalmapper v23 in 32gb/6 core Windows 10 virtual machine with Parallels on a 2018 hex-core 3.2ghz i7 Macintosh Mini with 64gb physical RAM and the Intel UHD-630 integrated graphics chip. It is very responsive.

Just created a 35-vertex polyline and then a 28-vertex polygon just as fast as I could click the mouse. I also had 4gb of raster imagery loaded at the same time. I have undo enabled with 512MB memory and 30 levels (guess that is the default because I don't recall changing it).

I have been working with some very large files recently and am sure I would have noticed anything remotely similar to the issues you're having.

JeffH@BMG

Note: just read an email from CarrickCon that I'd missed earlier, such that my 8/2 post here was unnecessary (sorry about that!). Turns out that the problem was with his desktop; when he installed 18.2 on it, it showed the same problems. Somehow he made some settings changes on his desktop (Windows settings, I surmise), and now the lag gone, Undo is absolved, and 23.1 is back to normal.

And we're glad for that!

Cheers,

~Jeff

KimH

Yes, I have noticed that v23.1 is slow, painfully slow and also unstable.

I'm not loading big files - mostly shp or tab files of vector data which is mostly points with many attributes. I cut down the large state wide files to just my ROI to limit data size but the csv imports are only a 1000 points with 40 alphanumberic attributes.

I download world imagery for the ROI or sometimes use a topo map saved as ecw or jpg2000 .

Version 17 and 18 rocked and I used them for years. I was forced into an upgrade for v20. Now v23 is no good. I am considering QGIS.