ArchiCAD 20 slow & Cinerender crash - MY SOLUTIONS

[Anonymous]

Dear ArchiCAD Community.

Before i used AC20 i used AC12. AC12 was very fast compared to vanilla AC20. I could type several keyboard commands in fast order and AC12 did them without hesitation. Panning and zooming was above average. 2D & 3D were fast. Lightworks engine worked without Problem.

After installing AC20 build 3012 i experienced this so often quoted "sluggishnes", and CinreRender did not work, but crashed with the error message "CineRender by MAXON add-on has unexpectedly closed. ArchiCAD schould be restartet".

So i deceided to give at a shot to try and find out what causes this sluggishnes. I used several system monitors and log scriptures to find out what ArchiCAD was doing in the background and what process was causing troubles.

After three Weekends of testing i can give the following Solutions for ArchiCAD 20 build 6005, running on an D / AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 2,0 , 8 GB, Radeon HD 5870, Windows 7 x64, 256 GB Samsung SSD. My AC20 now runs as fast as the old AC12, i might say even a bit faster. The old AC12 was running on the same system configuration by the way.



Getting Rid of Sluggishnes:

1.
Working over a network slows down to a degree, depending on network speed. I use to place the file and folders i am working with on my SSD harddisk drive. . Of course this solution will not work for Teamwork projects.

Speed improvement: moderate but still sluggish


2.
I disabled "Background updating". Whatever ArchiCAD 20 is doing in the Background, logs and monitor show, that it is not very effective and causes a lot of System traffic. It slowed down my AC20.

Speed improvement: moderate but still sluggish


3.
2D & 3D Antialiasing were disabled, 2D hardware acceleration and memory were set to full. Full model for 2D Navigation was set. Automatic renewing of modelsights was also disabled. Of course These actions are pure optional and depending on Hardware.

Speed improvement: significant but still sluggish


4.
Automatic saving was set to all 20min on a local HD Folder. All temporary folders were also set on HD.

Speed improvement: slight but still sluggish


5.
Using a mouse with a polling rate of not over 125 Hz (I use a mouse that allows me to set the polling rate, most mice do not have this option). This was a problem known to Graphisoft with the drawing area screen refreshment rate. It was told me that in build 6005 this problem was adressed and that a high mouse pollin rate does not causes a slowdown anymore. I tested it and it is true.

Speed improvement: significant with AC20 build 3012, none in newer builds, but still sluggish.


6.
Giving ArchiCAD.exe a "High" priority in the "Windows Task Manager".

Speed improvement: slight but still sluggish


7.
Disabling "qtguiagent.exe". There might have been some intern conflict in AC20, systems monitor and log showed considerable traffic sometimes, but since i have a 64bit machine i could disable this process (renamed it qtuiagent.old) without bad side effects. This was done during finding a solution for the Cinerender Problem.

Speed improvement: slight but still sluggish


8.
System monitoring and logs showed, that there was significant traffic with ArchiCAD, its system folders and "MsMpEng.exe". I use Microsoft Security Essentials. So "ArchiCAD.exe" and "ArchiCAD Starter.exe" received exceptions from scanning with MSE. Also all folders and processes concerning ArchiCAD20 received exceptions from scanning with MSE. MSE also was not allowed to scan ist own program folder anymore (Someone in a Forum hinted, that MSE can get clogged down in ist own processes with some programs, so i did this).

Speed improvement: significant , sluggishnes was gone ! This did it for me.

I recommend scanning the excepted folders and files manually from time to time though, as you downgrade System security !



Solving the problem with CineRender:

1.
I tried the solution shown in following topic:
https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=266292
installing Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2012 x86 and x64 and also Intel C++ Compiler for Windows

Effect: Cinerender still crashes


2.
Setting exceptions for all folders, processes and the CinRender.exe in Microsoft Security Essentials.

Effect: Cinerender still crashes


3.
Disabling "qtguiagent.exe" by renaming it in "qtguiagent.old"

Effect: Cinerender still crashes


4.
Allowing my Firewall ( I use COMODO Firewall) all incoming and outgoing traffic of "ArchiCAD.exe" & "CineRender.exe". That was a strange discovery. I usually block all incoming and outgoing traffic with my Firewall (Except local Host 127.0.0.1 or if i want to update etc...). After allowing all outgoing traffic with COMODO, CineRender started to work BUT ONLY, when "ArchiCAD.exe" was STARTED AS ADMINISTRATOR.

Effect: Cinerender works, but you cant drag and drop PDF (Any?) files anymore into ArchiCAD20, this is a side effect of some protection measure from Windows 7 for starting a program as Administrator. I yet have to pinpoint to what IP Adress CineRender or ArchiCAD wants to talk to that caused the problem, but at the moment i am happy as it is.


Conclusion:

In my case the sluggishnes and problems were caused to a great part by my own system protection software. Ressource monitoring and system logs showed me where to problems might be. After doing all of the above steps my AC20 works as fast as the old AC12, even a bit faster and CinRender also works at last. I Hope i could help anyone with the descriptions given above. Please excuse an bad grammar. Any feedback is welcome.

Best regards

Dragan

[cagarruta]

Great Dragan, thanks a lot!!
Joaquín