CD3 Bogging Down

Shessar · July 2009

I'm finally getting a chance to get back to mapping and have been playing around with CD3. When I first open the map everything works fine. However, the longer I work, the longer it takes to redraw a screen. This is a gradual slowdown, going from a fraction of a second at the beginning to taking almost three minutes after a half hour of mapping. It eventually just locks up my system. I never noticed this problem before installing CD3 and do not see this when working on a CC3 or DD3 map. I believe I am up to date with patches (v3.24).

Laptop: Pentium Dual-Core 1.73 GHz, 1 gig Ram, Win XP Home SP3

Any ideas why this is happening?

JimP · July 2009

WinXP SP3 has many of the items that Vista has. I don't think it runs well in only 1 gig of ram.

Shessar · July 2009

Posted By: JimPWinXP SP3 has many of the items that Vista has. I don't think it runs well in only 1 gig of ram.

Sorry, you've confused me on that. What doesn't run well on 1 gig of ram, XP or CD3?
Xp runs just fine. CC3 runs just fine. DD3 runs fine too, as do all of my other software (Paintshop pro, Photoshop, Realdraw, etc). Does CD3 have a higher ram requirement than the core CC software? I'm not being snitty. Just confused by your comment.

JimP · July 2009

I am saying many of the things that are in Vista are ram hungry. I have a Vista computer with 3 gigs of ram, and things still slow down.

I had a WinXP computer with 1 gig of ram, and SP 2. It ran slowly when I made maps. I upgraded it to 1.5 gigs, big jump in speed. I later upgraded it by removing the 512 meg, and put in 1 gig. Much better response.

So I am saying the slow down might be not enough ram in your computer.

Shessar · July 2009

Since I have no intention of rolling back the OS or of upgrading this laptop,I suppose my best choice is to do a reinstall of just CC3 and DD3 and do my cities with Photoshop. Kinda stinks since CD3 has features that I love, but as it is now, it's unbearable to work with.

Thanks for taking the time to respond Jim.

Gandwarf · July 2009

CD3 needs a pretty powerful computer I think... I recently purchased a beast of a machine and CD3 now runs quite smoothly. On my bigger maps loading effects can still take 10 to 20 seconds though :-)

JimP · July 2009

Ah, I see now. I have a WinXP laptop with 512 megs of ram. i can do overland maps on it, but not cities nor dungeons. I didn't notice your mention of laptop.

Simon Rogers · July 2009

You should always work with effects off. To increase speed further, look at the Display Speed settings and disable the aligned fill styles.

This should increase the speed enormously until you are ready to export.

Shessar · July 2009

Simon, I always work with effects off, however, disabling the aligned fill styles helps a lot. That one change has taken city mapping from unbearable to tolerable. If there are other tweaks that could get a little more speed for me I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

Dasaki · July 2009

Ya for me it likes to just really lag when I check out already created cities. then it pops the FastCAD error and asks if i want to report it.

So I'm guessing this is a video card problem?

JimP · July 2009

I am uncertain about that Dasaki. But I do know my desktop has a 3d card, while my laptop has integrated video chip on the motherboard.

Simon Rogers · July 2009

Posted By: ShessarSimon, I always work with effects off, however, disabling the aligned fill styles helpsa lot. That one change has taken city mapping from unbearable to tolerable. If there are other tweaks that could get a little more speed for me I'd love to hear them. Thanks!

Make sure you have lots of free memory by closing down other apps and any unecessary memory-hogging tasks (updaters, for example)

Hide all layers and sheets you aren't working on and don't currently need to see.

On Display Settings Select Fixed Bitmap Quality and choose Low (Very Low is probably not bearable, but you could try that)
Make sure "use memory cache for bitmaps" is on and make sure it's set to -1.
Disable shading
Try "Draw aligned fill styles as solid", too.

If you do fixed bitmap quality and zoom extents so that every bitmap image in your drawing is in memory, after the first zoom, you'll find the speed much increased.

Right click display speed settings, select Global Sun and deactivate Lighting, too.

Shessar · July 2009

Choosing the lower bitmap quality had the most impact as well as looking at what programs were memory resident. Dell had a speech recognition program sitting in memory that I never even realized was there. Dumped it, heh!

I'm actually able to map in CD3 at a reasonable pace now. I worked for two hours last night without any major slowdowns. Once again, thank you Simon! The PF staff again shows its fantastic customer support.

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CD3 Bogging Down

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