Topic: An Experiment to speed up Civil 3D that yielded positive results

[sourdough]

Hi all,

This is for those who don't use a SSD drive as their Window OS, this may be a boost with little effort.

If you have Norton Ghost do a complete backup... to make you feel good.

I did this test. I bought the Samsung 840 EVO Sata III, and used the Samsung Magician in Rapid Mode. My program was installed on my C Drive on a WD Raptor 10,000 rpm.
 
Save your existing Profile for Civil 3D. 

Next, I uninstalled my Civil 3d 2011, rebooted and had my SSD drive mentioned setup so that I could reinstall my Civil 3D 2011 configured to the SSD drive. Did the install (configured to my SSD drive in setup), and the authorization did not have to be redone.....Big Cudo!

 Then recalled my profile (.arg). Next had to just manually reload my Lisp routines once (all were still visible in my app suitcase), and did my menu loads and restarted the program.

What I noticed was a noticeable increase in switch tab time (with dense aerial in viewports) substantially improved.

I hope that this might be help a few that were wondering how to improve Civil 3D performance.

MJP

[mjfarrell]

You may have accidentally set up windows to run the way it likes to run.
Applications on one HD, and the Virtual memory space on another.
One can do this by adding secondary HD and setting windows to use the second drive for Page File, and Temp file locations.
Buying faster Hard drives is also something most don't factor into their CAD system configuration.
7500 RPM being standard
however 10000 RPM are preferred and many have large data cache and 'burst' transfer.

[sourdough]

Mike, with all due respect... I did nothing to the OS (Raptor Drive 10,000 rpm), I did a original normal setup of Civil 3D on my C Drive, then added the SSD and uninstalled Civil 3D, rebooted and installed Civil 3D 2011 on the SSD Drive. The exceptional speed of the Samsung with the Data Magician and assigning the Rapid Mode increases burst read/write speed. The results speak for themselves as shown in the fig.. Finding a cheap and simple way to improve performance is always good to know about. I appreciate your perspectives on your post.

MJP

[huiz]

Why can't you have a SSD with your OS and the software? I have a SSD as the C: disk with Windows and Civil3D is also installed on it.

Starting Civil3D takes only 8 sec.

Ok, it also helps to have a HP Z book with 24GB ram, nVidea card with 8GB, Intel Core i7, and not installed to much crap...

[sourdough]

I did that once..... found it lost some sectors... and had to do the system all over and lost a ton of time.... so gun shy to do that again...

MJP

[mjfarrell]

Actually you did, you separated the drive running the Application from the drive running the OS.

What I am saying is one can do the same thing using normal Windows OS performance tuning methods, i.e.
separate HD for the Swap file (virtual memory space), and the TEMP file.

Also note that you used 10000 RPM drive as I mentioned?

Any way happy hunting...it's wabbit season!

[Mark]

Starting Civil3D takes only 8 sec.

holy moly!!

[alanjt]

Starting Civil3D takes only 8 sec.

holy moly!!

I know!

[Jeff_M]

Yep, loading C3D from a SSD is quite snappy! C3D 2012, 2013, 2014, all load with SincpacC3D plus some of my test dll's in 9 -12 seconds on my 3 year old laptop. On the new laptop running Win8.1 on a newer, faster, SSD, which has just C3D2014 & SincpacC3D, it's a 6-7 second load time. Now, if C3D would just process corridors or 3dOrbit that fast!

[sourdough]

Jeff, my wish on this is that Autodesk would be even wiser if they used the GPU to do some of the calc/grunt work to get this program really hopping. They do it with Maya and some other select programs...

MJP

[mjfarrell]

Jeff, my wish on this is that Autodesk would be even wiser if they used the GPU to do some of the calc/grunt work to get this program really hopping. They do it with Maya and some other select programs...

MJP

A better wish...that they would us multiple CPU's and cores and make Civil 3D objects compatible with MAP.

[BlackBox]

Jeff, my wish on this is that Autodesk would be even wiser if they used the GPU to do some of the calc/grunt work to get this program really hopping. They do it with Maya and some other select programs...

I miss working with Maya.