Autotext causing huge performance lag

[jkershaw]

This is a new one.

I have a textbox with several autotext references. These seem to be causing HUGE performance lag - scrolling, selecting, editing all slow to a crawl. If I remove the autotext reference, the lag goes away completely.

This is not the only textbox with autotext references, but it appears to be the only one causing issues.

Any ideas on a solution??

Thanks!

[DGSketcher]

Re-create the block fresh. Over the years I have had weird things like this happen. Why, I don't know, could be a legacy setting issue or just simple data corruption. Sometimes it's just easier to replace the offending item rather than worry why it isn't working especially if as you have suggested it looks like an isolated item.

[jkershaw]

This was the first solution I tried as well, but to no avail. It wasn't until I removed the autotext references that the performance started behaving correctly. Going to try again today - because, you know, it's a new day and sometimes ArchiCAD just needs some time off...

[DGSketcher]

And sometimes a cold boot helps. The Mac is pretty good at going to sleep so I don't fully shut down unless things are playing up or something has been updated. It's also that time of year when Apple are sneaking little update through to maintain compatibility with their new OS so it may be worth trying a reboot.

[zoli79]

I've noticed that if I place an autotext referencing another drawing placed on a sheet (for example: "see 19/A3.2") everything dies: the worksheet the autotext appears, the layout the worksheet is placed, the textbox...
I first discovered this in AC18, and still is an issue.
Sorry, no help from me, just the thought that there are other frustrated users with the same issue.

BTW, what are you referencing?

[jkershaw]

Thanks for commiserating!

I'm referencing another drawing on another layout - something I do all the time. I have all my project notes in a single worksheet. Those notes have autotext references to drawings on other sheets. This is the only text box that's giving me troubles.

GS has reached out to help, so we'll see what happens.

[Daniel Kovacs]

Hello Everyone,

We looked at the project of jkershaw, and we found what causes the issue. Apparently when refreshing a view (which happens every time you move in it), a whole bunch of code runs to check the text positions for the entire textbox when there's an autotext in it (so that if the autotext refreshes, it can make sure every text is in the right position). This code is pretty heavy, and it runs for every line in the textbox, and that takes a lot of time and resources.

This means that if the autotext is in a smaller textbox, it causes no slowdowns. The developers also confirmed that in the next main version it might be fixed, because we plan to change this behavior.

In this specific case, there was a single textbox with about a hundred lines, and there was a single autotext in it. The solution for this is to put the line with the autotext in a separate textbox, and group the 3 textboxes together (see attached image). After you do this, everything will be fast.