5.41 problems

[debenriver]

Hi Eric

I am still getting problems running v.5.41 on a non-M chip MacBook Air. It starts off just fine. Very fast everything OK. Then it gradually gets slower and slower until it's basically not usable. So I quit and restart – and then its fine again until it starts to slow down as before and become unusable.

It's as if it's gradually consuming more and more memory somehow. But looking at Activity Monitor I don't think this is the case?

I do have a MacBook air with an M1 chip and I tried running it on that and it seemed fine. Trouble is that machine doesn't really have enough storage!!

Can RealCADD be storing more and more information so that it eventually clogs up and becomes so slow that it can't function? And re-booting the program resets it all?

Cheers --George

[Eric Pousse]

Bonjour George,

Can you see this problem with different drawings?
How many objects do you have in this files?
What happens if you close the drawing and open it again?
Do you have a SSD drive?

Saving undo can be memory consuming.
On iOS or iPadOS, I erase undo when the memory is low.
Perhaps, I have to do that also on desktop.

Cordialement.

[debenriver]

Hi Eric

To answer your questions:

It doesn't seem to be particularly related to total number of objects or a particular drawing. On the drawing I am working on at the moment there are currently 4116 objects – not a huge number – and about 3000 of those could be converted to four polygons, so would only then count as 4 objects. Larger drawings may have 20,000 - 30,000 objects. But I was having real trouble with a drawing with only about 2,000 objects. A lot of the curves and shapes on my drawings are made up of a great many short joined lines (polycurves), which at various stages in the drawing process get converted to polygons (to find the area for example) and then converted back to lines (to manipulate or join to another object for example). I may do that a lot of times. Most of the basic objects in a most of my drawings are derived from MacSurf via opening a dxf file in RealCADD and then copying the shapes to a new or existing RealCADD file – which is why most curved lines are made up of a lot of short joined lines. Could they be carrying a burden of data with them? Doesn't seem feasible and anyway everything is good and fast to start with and then gradually slows down.

Closing a drawing and then opening it again doesn't seem to make a difference – either to that drawing or any others that are currently open. Once it starts to slow down it seems to affect all drawings, even if you open a previously unopened drawing.

Yes it's an SSD drive. 1.2 GHz quad-core i7. Iris Plus Graphics 1536 MB. 16 GB 3733 MHz memory. 327 GB of 1TB of storage used. iOS Sonoma 14.6.1

I don't actually do many "undos" but I guess every action is saved so that you can undo back to the previous "save"? But I save pretty regularly – I have the reminder set at 10 minutes usually. But of course I can make a lot of moves in 10 minutes!

Would some sort of Purge function that you could manually invoke be possible or effective?

Cheers -- George

EDIT I experimented with an entirely new drawing. As far as I could ascertain it's to do with tool selection. If you select for continuous tool use, as long as you keep drawing the same thing – say a rectangle – everything is fine. You can draw as many as you want as quickly as you want.

But when you select for a new tool – say a line – it takes a while to change and if you try to draw the line too soon that's when it starts to get in a muddle. If you select the new tool and then just keep the cursor on the screen until it changes to a cross, then click the mouse to draw, it's fine. But because the change is very slow you tend to start trying to draw as soon as you've selected the tool.

Same with all the tools and with the zoom glass it can really get in a muddle stacking up multiple zoom commands!

If you select for single tool use, it's much the same, you have to wait for it to get back to the select arrow before changing tools and then wait the same until the new tool becomes active and the cursor changes to a cross, ready to draw.

Perhaps it is to do with the option to select for continuous or single tool use???

[Eric Pousse]

George,

I tried on a MacBook Pro mid-2015 2.8 GHz quad-core i7 with macOS Monterey and I can't reproduce the problem.
With 20,000 lines there is a little delay to begin to draw but if I go to another drawing without object (or many less) it is OK.
And the delay is the same each time, with each tool.
If I reduce the number of objects in the same drawing, the delay is reduced too.
Can you try with different values of zoom?

Thanks.
Cordialement.

[debenriver]

Hi Eric

Yes at higher zooms it does get slower.

I took a couple of screenshot movies which show the problems I'm having. †hese are after about 10 minutes or so. It does get worse than that if you persist.

https://whisstock.com/screenshot_1.mov and
https://whisstock.com/screenshot_2.mov

You can see the troubles I'm having!

Also the tool hints are generally not relevant to the tool you are trying to select – which is a bit disconcerting – I could turn them off of course!

I guess it could be my laptop???

Cheers -- George

[Eric Pousse]

Bonjour George,

OK I see the problem, very strange.
The tool hints are good but displayed with a big delay...
Can you try on as another user without extension ?

I will try again with my old MacBook.

Cordialement.

P.S. : Tried again and can't reproduce the problem, sorry.

[debenriver]

Can you try on as another user without extension ?

Sorry Eric I don't quite understand what you want me to do??

Cheers -- George

EDIT – and I seem to get the same problems with earlier versions – I went back to v. 5.21. So I guess it must be my laptop. I ran EtreCheck and it said Performance: Below Average. But it didn't find any major problems and no minor problems that were obvious (to me). So until I can get back in the States (I'm in Australia til the beginning of February), I'll just soldier on as I am!! Maybe if I backed the whole thing up and did a complete disk erase and started with a new system etc it would improve.

[Eric Pousse]

George,

In settings system, go to "users and groups", create a new user to test without all extensions you have : Siri, "new" (I don't what it is) and others.
Or you can also try rebooting after disabling them without creating a new user.

Thanks.

[debenriver]

Hi Eric

I tried creating a new User with just the standard Mac programs and got much the same results as RealCADD gradually slowed down to finally being unusable.

I also ran EtreCheck on the new User with much the same result – Performance: Below Average. The Minor problems listed were much the same.

I did notice on both checks that there was heavy CPU usage on several programs – including RealCADD.

I'm going to see if I can borrow a laptop from my granddaughter and try RealCADD on that.

Thanks for all your help.

Cheers -- George

PS New is the name of my Home folder!