Slow Navigation of AC Acroos Network

[Anonymous]

I've read several forums about navigation problems in AC, all of which point to upgrading hardware or updating software. Our office is currently running AC 8.1; all of the computers here are G5's with 1.8Ghz processor, 1GB RAM, and OS 10.3.3 (except for the server which is a G4). we are finding that it takes an extraordinarily long time to navigate the network with AC (and we know that it is AC because this problem does not occur with any other application), sometimes taking 30 sec-several minutes to view the contents of the next folder. It's not the network either; we use CAT5 wiring between all the computers, connecting them with a Lynksis router.

Our next problem is that we cannot sign into a TW project from another computer (after spending such a long time locating the file to open ); .PLP's are accessible only from the computer that they were created on originally. If I try to sign into one from another computer, AC brings up a blank screen as it would when starting a new project with the title "untitled." Help?

[Anonymous]

Katie, found your posting interesting.

Our problems seem to really manifest themselves at the time we upgraded our network and added a DLS router but this appears to be working fine. GSUK offered us a possible solution involving editing one of the plist files on the G5's using OSX Terminal. Tried this on several machines and it made some improvement but not much better so have sent bug reports and system profiles of every Mac to Graphisoft for analysis. I share your frustration. Our office is up against deadlines where teamshare would really help but reluctant to use again until problem solved.

[Anonymous]

well, I have just upgraded one computer so it has v2, and the problem re-appeared. removed dsl from the network, problem not solved. disconnected from the server and reconnected, problem not solved. restarted computer, seems to speed things up ...opening the 'open' window gives me the spinning ball but once it is open it seems to work ok. so now I have solved nothing.

what is a safe way to work on these things then? move the files to a local machine to work on them, then upload them to the server to be backed up at the end of the day? I don't know whether to tell the guys to try working or not

I am at my wits end with this.

[Anonymous]

Katie - you're not alone! We're having this problem as well, and it all seemed to start about the time that these upgrades to AC got loaded. Except for teamwork files, I'm recommending to staff that they pull files off and work locally all day, saving back tothe server as you mentioned. With teamwork, if they can save a draft and be server-independant, that's a solution, too, but changing workspace becomes difficult. No easy answers yet.

Not every machine has the problem browsing, and it comes and goes on others. It seems to relate in some way to the status of our network.

I shall attempt to explain the problems- forgive the lengthy post!

The other problem we now have (to which I have only yesterday guessed a connection) relates to our DSL and the way that our IP addresses are assigned. Our DSL line is very low bandwidth, and til recently hasn't been a big problem, other than slow web browsing or long file transfer times. It is shared by about 15-20 staff. In the last month or so, we've been COMPLETELY losing our connection to the internet. According to the DSL provider, it is because of VERY LARGE quantities of data going across the connection. Nothing in our usage pattern has changed, and we are not virus laden (blessed Mac). This leaves only an application that has changed its use of the network - ArchiCAD, perhaps?

I wonder whether AC is routing all of its communications with the network out through the router to our ISP and then back to the IP addresses assigned by the ISP. Seems likethat could account for a high traffic volume. (I should also mention that the outages have occurred mostly on days when everyone is in the office, and then at about 9:30 AM when everyone gets into the CAD operations after returning the first calls of the day)

What I really need to do is get our network consultant in touch with someone at GS Techsupport who understands how AC talks across a network, and how they interact. That is, if anyone as GS understands how it works, too...

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to report to the list that the fix supplied by graphisoft tech support to modify the AC plist preference file (and upgrading to v2) seems to have solved our network slowdown thing.
so email your friendly tech guy today and get the instructions for using the terminal to do scary things to your preferences! Hopefully the fix will work for other people as well.

cheers, and thanks!
Katie Bertsche

[Anonymous]

I have just experienced this slow down for the first time even though nothing has changed in our setup since we upgraded our ArchiCAD last month.

I have applied the fix to the ArchiCAD preference file as described by US Tech Support. But I an now experiencing the same browsing slowdown in PlotMaker.

Should I add the same key to the PlotMaker preference file to fix this problem?

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Katie wrote:
...email your friendly tech guy today and get the instructions for using the terminal to do scary things to your preferences!

Could you post those instructions?

[Anonymous]

See http://12.98.13.110/ Record #795

From US Tech Resouces:

- Find the build number of your ArchiCAD (in the ArchiCAD menu, select "about ArchiCAD" and find the four-digit number in the bottom-right corner of the window)

- Find com.graphisoft.acXXXXYYY.plist file. (XXXX is the build number you just found out, YYY is the language version of your ArchiCAD. e.g. com.graphisoft.ac2284USA.plist) It is located in userhome/library/preferences

- This is the file you have to edit in Terminal window.

- Open Terminal

- type: defaults write com.graphisoft.acXXXXYYY InputOutput -dict "DisableCrossPlatfromMountingFeatures" "<true/>"

This is like editing the registry on PC. It will create a new key in the com.graphisoft.acXXXXYYY.plist file called "DisableCrossPlatfromMountingFeatures" (note that the spelling mistake "Platfrom" is deliberate) and set it to "true". This will disable some routines that ArchiCAD uses to translate MAC location names to names recognized by windows. The only result of this is that if you open a file saved by a such modified ArchiCAD on a PC, it will not automatically find the necessary libraries. If this office is MAC-only, this will not cause any inconviniences at all. Of course this also will not make the files unreadable by PCs.

If you edited the com.graphisoft.acXXXXYYY.plist file like this, please open com.graphisoft.acXXXXYYY.plist in TextEdit and make sure that you find this script somewhere in the text:

<dict>

<key>DisableCrossPlatfromMountingFeatures</key>

<true/>

</dict>

[Anonymous]

yep, you can do the same thing to plotmaker. the plist file is called com.graphisoft.pmxxxxyyy we had to do that this morning, when the slowdown appeared...

[Anonymous]

All right, I'll give it a try.
Thanks.

BTW, greetings to you SE Conn. My wife grew up in Old Lyme. We should be out there this fall.

[Anonymous]

Thank you gays!
Finally I got rid of extreme slow browsing in finder.
Did a test a couple of days ago and it took me 28 min to X-REF 8 different .dwg-files!!
I'm managing 30 users who are all nagging me about the slow 8.1, some of them refused to work in 8.1, this is a relief.
Thank you!