Topic: temporary screen freeze in windows 7? can it be disabled?

[Bob Q]

I have switched to windows 7 from xp64 and in Windows 7 the "waiting" spinner thing pops up and the screen freezes in the middle of intensive autolisp calculations.  While I am guessing this is some attempt to increase speed on the system while doing large amounts of calculations, it also has the adverse side effect of not being able to see princ statements and what is happening graphically on the screen.  This is bad when you are trying to debug things.

Does anyone know of a way to disable this feature of windows 7 or even what it is called?

Thanks 

[CAB]

Using Win 7 Pro 64 and ACAD2006. no screen freeze here.

[hmspe]

Win 7 64 Home here.  I've never seen this with Autocad 2010, 2011, or 2012.  Are you sure that the freeze is coming from Autocad? 

[kruuger]

it happens very often
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=39931.msg452319#msg452319
k.

[Peter Guappa]

Same problem here.
Win7 Home.
Autocad 2010-2013
Bricscad 12.2

It "seems" Autocad/Bricscad is not responding anymore, while it is still calculating. Very annoying while debugging.
Didn't happen in XP, so I believe it has to do with win7.


 

[irneb]

I've explained the situation in the thread kruuger linked to. It "does" happen in XP, just not as often as in W7.

An old technique to overcome such thing in other languages (such as C++) would be to force a UI thread update by calling the Update method of the Application object. Or in C to call the ProcessEvents function. You could probably do something similar trough vla / textscr/graphscr, though I wouldn't hold my breath.

It's one of the problems of ADesk's fosilized implementation of their lisp interpreter. Unlike other interpreters (especially including all other lisps) there's no threading involved, so while a lisp runs, ACad can do nothing else until it completes - including not even answering windows with a "Are you still awake?" query. Thus the screen update doesn't happen and this could even cause windows to "think" that acad has crashed.

[trogg]

I don't know if this would be helpful - it was for a couple of routines at work. It temporarily turns off the autosave feature during long routines and then turns it back on at the end.
I'm sorry  - I don't remember where I found it either...

Code: [Select]

;;; For long routines. While in a routine that takes a long time,
;;; the autosave feature may come on and jack things up
;;; Simply change the autosave feature's variable at the beginning and
;;; then turn it back on at the end of the routine

(setq savetime (getvar 'savetime))
(setvar 'savetime 0)

;........

;; At the end of your routine reset the system variable as it was set before invoking the routine


(setvar 'savetime savetime)

[Bob Q]

Thank you for the input, it is however happening all the time....

[deegeecees]

Just a shot in the dark, but does it have anything to do with the Indexing?

[Bob Q]

Hmmmm not sure, I don't know what indexing is.... isn't it something to do with file searching?
I think it can be turned off. I will investigate....

[Bob Q]

I tried turning indexing off, tested again and it still does the same thing.
I wonder if a short pause statement would help..... ??
Maybe a routine that turn on and off pauses only while doing testing or something.
I will give it a whirl and see if that helps.

[KewlToyZ]

I remember when this issue first came up in the thread mentioned. It is still a nuisance.
I just wish there was an easy fix for it.
It isn't a freeze, its simply a pause in visual updating to run the process in the background.
The routine is running in the background just fine, just no visual actions demonstrate until it is complete, even with a counter present.

[KewlToyZ]

An example would be this routine for changing hatch/solids/fills properties and sending them to the back of the drawing order. Use it on a large drawing with numerous hatches and you get the screen update pauses.

[pBe]

It reminds of the "Animated screen character" on Windows file find. in this case instead of rover the puppy its a spinning disk. Maybe  there is a way to switch that off.

For now when it "thinks" it "spins"   

[KewlToyZ]

I was curious if these settings could affect it in different combinations:

(command "INTELLIGENTUPDATE" 0)
;   Controls the graphics refresh rate.
;   The default value is 20 frames per second.
;   If you encounter problems related to graphics generation or timing, turn off the variable by setting it to 0.
;   INTELLIGENTUPDATE works by suppressing the graphics update until the timer expires. Subsequent updates reset the timer.
;   The performance improvement significantly affects updates for scripts and AutoLISP graphics.
;   Those using regular AutoCAD commands will not see a noticeable difference in performance.

(command "NOMUTT" 0)
;   Suppresses the message display (muttering) when it wouldn't normally be suppressed.
;    Displaying messages is the normal mode, but message display is suppressed during scripts, AutoLISP routines, and so on.
;   0   Resumes normal muttering behavior
;   1   Suppresses muttering indefinitely

I'll try tomorrow

[Bob Q]

I tried playing with these values, couldn't find anything that made any difference....

[dgorsman]

There is no background running for LISP.  It's either the AutoCAD UI or LISP, not both.  This might be some of the fall-out of moving towards the "core console" concept where they further divorce the program contents from a specific UI like Win7.  It allows them to better migrate program features to Mac but in theory it could also greatly simplify migrating to newer versions of Windows as well.  Regardless, if there wasn't some wait-cursor-symbol, the user would still be unable to do anything but think the program had locked up.

If you want a status update for extremely long loops, have you tried the (acet-progress-ui...) functions?  It might also be time to review and refactor the loop with an eye towards better optimization.

[irneb]

It might also be time to review and refactor the loop with an eye towards better optimization.

That's usually the "best" option if your lisp is running for a long time. E.g. That Hatch250 routine is sending a command for each hatch selected. Perhaps you should move that command outside the loop (especially since you send the entire selection set to the command anyway). Or you could change the chprop command-call into an entmod instead. Both these should drastically speed up your routine (I mean by 10 to 1000 times faster).

[Bob Q]

I don't know anything about the (acet... etc. functions could you explain?
Thanks....

p.s. in ac2004 on same computer, none of the screen update freezes occur....

[irneb]

p.s. in ac2004 on same computer, none of the screen update freezes occur....

Same OS, same 32/64 bit, same Lisp code, same library calls in the lisp for both versions? Those also have an effect. E.g. running AC2004 on W7/64 would at best run it in 32bit mode, which might have different settings to the 64bit mode.

The acet functions are those contained in the Express tools package. Look under the AutoCAD program folder. You should see a sub-folder called Express. Under there is all the LSP files, read through them to see what other functions there are. Some have been compiled to FAS, or even converted to ARX - so it's not always possible though.

[Bob Q]

I am guessing the older 32 bit ac2004 does not tax the cpu as hard and thus does not trigger the same reaction....

[irneb]

Not actually, the 32bit is running in a different mode in W7/64. That mode has different memory / thread management algorithms & settings. So it might be that the 32bit mode is more like XP was.

Have you tried a new 32bit ACad on XP compared to AC2004 on XP?

[Bob Q]

No I have not... I don't have xp installed.
I wonder if 32 ac2013 could be loaded on win7? Maybe that would work differently...

[dgorsman]

Internally I imagine 2004 looks very little like the newer releases, so it isn't really a good comparison - especially when newer OS and hardware are thrown into the mix.

[CAB]

I don't know anything about the (acet... etc. functions could you explain?
Thanks....

Example:
http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=22840.msg274864#msg274864