Some Antivirus Solutions May Dramatically Reduce the Performance of ARCHICAD

[Emoke Csikos]

Affected version(s): ARCHICAD 18 and 19 | Severity: workaround applicable (see Solution)|

Issue

We have been reported many cases when ARCHICAD users experienced major slowdown of ARCHICAD 18 and 19. In many cases the slowness was not related to any specific operation. In other cases the program was unresponsive after start-up and yet in other cases teamwork related operations were significantly slower than normal.

Causes

Examining these cases we found that certain antivirus solutions are responsible for these performance issues. Theoretically all antivirus applications can be problematic since they scan http based communication and most of ARCHICAD’s and BIM Server’s communication uses this protocol. In the problematic cases we have seen Bitdefender, AV Defender or F-secure were scanning this communication which lead to the slowness. If the user experiences slowness during the opening it is possible that the antivirus holds curl.exe which is also an http client that plays a role in licensing. Another type of problem is when the antivirus consumes most of the read/write capacity of the hard drive which may also result in slowness.

Solution

• You need to carefully configure your antivirus solution.
• Put ARCHICAD, BIM Server and the folders they use on the exceptions list of the antivirus.
• Make sure that network ports used by BIM Server are not scanned by the antivirus.