topic Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it? in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

AZendel — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 17:17:11 GMT

At our office, we receive new computers every few years. The last time around for me, we met and exceeded the minimum requirements for Pro. This machine was not cheap. That investment has paid off in terms of map performance in Pro. The rendering is fast and it and the display is beautiful (seems like Pro uses more antialiasing than ArcMap). You’d think that map rendering/display is one of the more resource demanding aspects of Pro in terms of processing, memory and the graphics card. Reason would then suggest that if the map can perform so well, the interface of Pro should be insanely fast. But a lot of time, components of the interface outside of the map or scene become so slow and/or unresponsive that it’s frequently crippling. That may sound like an exaggeration or overstatement, but 20 seconds here, 20 seconds there adds up. In fact, I’m writing a lot of the sentences of this post while I’m waiting for the interface to unfreeze so I can resume my GIS tasks.

Most of the UI freezing that I experience is with the Contents pane. When I add a layer to the map, the layer is rendered on the map nearly instantly. But many times the Contents pane goes unresponsive. So I can’t drag the layer up and down or switch to any of the other content tabs. But the longest hangs happen on the Edit tab. Here’s the output from Monitor for just switching to the Edit tab in a map with only about 12 layers in it:

20 seconds just to switch to the Edit tab

Below is the output when I checked or unchecked one layer at a time on the edit tab:

There are five layers on this map that I want to mark as uneditable. So at the average wait time of 18 seconds for every click, I can’t start doing my work for a total 90 seconds. If there’s a group layer in the map, I get a very similar lag just to expand the group layer so I can view what layers within it are currently editable.

Here’s a really bad hang up that happened when I opened the field properties for a feature class from the Catalog pane:

Almost a minute and a half to display the field list?!?

This one occurred when I switched from the edit tab to the “list by drawing order tab”

28 seconds?

Sometimes these functions show up when trying to interact with the interface, even when all layers are flagged as uneditable

What does CanEditDataAsync have to do with the interface, especially when there are no editable layers in the map?

This popped up when I double clicked the “Make Feature Layer” tool in Model Builder:

Again, what does this have to do with editing?

All the while, Windows Task Manager is reporting that 7.7 GB of 16 GB is available. I’ve tried disabling all of the McAfee scans on my computer that I can; I have fairly high level privileges over individual workstations, but not over our domain. All of our file geodatabases are a Windows file server. We must store needed data there because the C-drives on our individual workstations are not backed up.

My two primary questions at this point:

1) Am I the only Pro user who’s experiencing this? I’m currently on Pro 2.0.1, but I was experiencing these problems with previous versions as well

2) Is there anything I can do about this? Is there some sort of setting, in Pro or Windows, that will alleviate these problems?

I'd really like to start using Pro for more of my projects and regular workflows. But all of these repeated delays make it hard to do that when deadlines approach.

Thanks.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

XanderBakker — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 17:33:12 GMT

Here is a link to a relatively old post (1 year), but it might have some pointers to help you:

Troubleshooting Performance Issues in ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Blog

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

AZendel — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:25:07 GMT

Thanks for the suggestion. I've read that article, which is how I learned to use the Monitor to see what processes are causing the UI to hang. But the article doesn't tell you what you can do to overcome these UI hang ups. All it suggests is "this can then be reported to Esri support."

Have you encountered any of similar issues that I've run across in the Pro UI? Anyone Else?

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

XanderBakker — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 20:14:10 GMT

Hi azendel , I haven´t experienced this personally, but maybe the best thing would be to contact support and share the results that you obtained through monitoring.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

AZendel — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 20:42:34 GMT

Yep, this issue is probably headed that way. It sometimes helps to gather some information before starting the Tech Support process. So I figured that I'd try this first.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 21:47:03 GMT

azendel‌

Have you tried the following or asked these questions to help isolate the issue?

1. Do all ArcGIS Pro users in the office experience similar performance lags?

2. What about different users on your same machine?

3. What about using your user profile on a different machine?

4. What happens in a different Pro project? If you open a blank project and add some of the same layers and repeat some of the same steps that are causing the lag described, do you still get the lag?

5. You mentioned that your data is all on a Windows file server. I understand the need for that, but for troubleshooting purposes, what happens if you pull data locally, point to the local data (from the laggy map if possible so that we're creating a true comparison) and do some of the same steps described above?

With some of those steps, we might be able to determine if this is a user profile issue, machine issue, project issue, or data location issue.

Being prepared with the results from above will definitely help if you end up working with technical support on the issue.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 20:26:25 GMT

azendel‌ Just wanted to let you know that our dev team has logged an internal issue to take a look at this. You can message me if you need further information or to track the issue.

Thank you.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

AZendel — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 21:24:13 GMT

Thanks for all of your help/suggestions, Kory and Xander. I think I may have uncovered the culprit: ArcMap layer files (.lyr) in Pro. Not all of our .lyr files are causing issues. But the ones that do:

1) reference data in our county's Oracle SDE database

2) were probably first saved (created) quite some time ago

Over the years, we have upgraded both the Oracle server and the Oracle client libraries, such as moving from 10g to 11g (I think the 11g part is right). Anyhow, it seems the lyr files from our 10g era are the biggest offenders. We've had some issues with older MXDs opening quite slowly in ArcMap as well. Something seems to be 'looking' for older versions of the database and it takes a while to resolve.

I've been dropping some of these older layer files that were probably created when we were using ArcMap 10.2 into most of the Pro projects that I've been working with. These are commonly used layers such as street centerlines, zoning, our sector plans, parcels with active owners joined from a separate table, etc. That's why it's seemed to be a persistent problem with Pro. When I don't use lyr files, I'm not having many problems with any of the symptoms that I listed in my original post.

One thing that's interesting: I saved one of these problematic layer files as an ArcGIS Pro layer (.lyrx) file. Then I added it to a fresh Pro project. Boom! All of the hanging UI issues showed up again. So it seems like these 'old' database references are being passed to the lyrx files too.

It's quitting time and I'm late for a meet up. Need to go, but I wanted to get this posted so you wouldn't waste any more time scratching your head on this one. I'll probably do some more testing later to confirm that this is the cause of the problem.

Thanks again for all of your help!

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 21:28:41 GMT

Thanks. I've shared with the dev team that will be investigating the issue. Definitely good information to have. Please continue to pass us new findings and we'll do the same.

Cheers

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

TylerSchwartz2 — Thu, 05 Oct 2017 17:11:32 GMT

I would just like to add that simple tasks such as editing an attribute table or changing symbology, is painstakingly slow compared to ArcMap (although I do like the new way of editing, no need to go directly into edit mode). And as the OP mentioned, 20 seconds here, 20 seconds there definitely add up.

Overall it seems these simple tasks are slow, delayed, and much less "crisp" and responsive than in ArcMap. I think I have a pretty powerful desktop machine but the constant spinning blue wheel, hangs, and crashes are really leaving me frustrated with Pro - which should be faster, better, stronger than ArcMap (and still retain the same functionality).

Although the difference for me is that I am not using ArcMap .lyr files - I have converted all of mine to .lyrx.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

AZendel — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 14:25:08 GMT

Frustrating, isn't it? Did you import any ArcMap layer files into your Pro project? Or import an MXD?

I still think that the older layer files that point at our SDE database are the primary cause of the problems I was experiencing, but I've since had a couple of Pro projects slow down pretty severely. Hopefully this isn't a trend.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

TylerSchwartz2 — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 16:13:02 GMT

Back when I first switched to Pro I was using all my .lyr files from ArcMap, but quickly re-exported them all out to .lyrx files. There are definitely bugs (which I have reported) still to be worked out in symbology (and for that matter, layer heirarchy in the ToC where one layer displays over another despite being below it in heirarchy). Another example is that since 2.0, Pro crashes anytime I try to add an additional map to the project. I have submitted countless crash reports on that issue alone, and still remains unresolved in the latest version 2.0.1 (the issue wasnt present in 1.4). All these bugs create a perception that the software isnt "ready", it isn't fully optimized and tested - still a work in progress.

But just overall, the delay and responsiveness of the UI is way behind ArcMap when it comes to doing tasks like editing an attribute table, running a calculate field, and applying a symbology. ArcMap executes these tasks almost as fast as I can click and move my mouse - in Pro there is a lag and delay on almost everything.

I have a pretty beefy desktop so I *should* have the processing power, the GPU (Nvidia Quadro M4000), 16GB RAM and hard drive read/write (solid state Samsung NVME) to have fast, responsive framerates. However, Pro doesnt seem to be able to utilize the hardware to its fullest extent. For instance, I never see above 20% cpu usage with pro - is that normal? It seems like Pro should be able to use more... Ideally I feel like Pro should have the fast framerates that I see in ArcMap when performing the exact same tasks, given that it is 64-bit and apparently can utilize multiple cores...

Again, with the numerous bugs still present in Pro my perception is that the software isnt optimized properly and there are still plenty of bugs remaining in the software which are/could be causing performance issues.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

MarcoBoeringa — Sun, 08 Oct 2017 08:01:03 GMT

All these bugs create a perception that the software isnt "ready", it isn't fully optimized and tested - still a work in progress.

But just overall, the delay and responsiveness of the UI is way behind ArcMap when it comes to doing tasks like editing an attribute table, running a calculate field, and applying a symbology. ArcMap executes these tasks almost as fast as I can click and move my mouse - in Pro there is a lag and delay on almost everything.
...
Again, with the numerous bugs still present in Pro my perception is that the software isnt optimized properly and there are still plenty of bugs remaining in the software which are/could be causing performance issues.

I share the pain. My brand new laptop also well exceeds minimum requirements (hyperthreaded 4 core i7 with 16GB RAM and NVidia graphics card), but Pro's interface usage is consistently slow and interfered by the drawing processes going on in the map or layout displays, meaning large parts of the interface are greyed out and unusable for extended (20s-1min) periods of time. Even doing a minimal change like adjusting the color of a single legend item, can result in significant waiting time before the change is applied and the interface is released for usage again. Hitting the escape button to stop drawing processes sometimes helps a bit, but often not.

I agree ESRI still has lots of optimization to do on Pro, including solving threading issues. I also think it needs to be better tested by pushing its usage to its absolute limits in terms of layers being used in the TOC, and database sizes connected to the project, so as to reveal (performance) issues and allow fixes to be introduced for power GIS users of the app. E.g. I regularily work with a topographic map containing a few hundred layers in ArcMap. I can import the project in Pro, and export PDFs from there, but interacting with the interface can be a real pain at times with such a large project.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Mon, 09 Oct 2017 13:48:13 GMT

tyschwartz‌ I'll message you to see if we can get in touch to take a look at the error reports and get more details about steps that lead up to crashing. Thank you.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:23:34 GMT

For the good of the thread, what we found with this particular case is that it has to do with having a map with many layers that point to very large data - think on the scale of about 20Gb.

The reproducible case over here was:

1. Import the Business Analyst .mxd to ArcGIS Pro

2. Remove all BDS layers, retaining just the basemap.

3. Convert that map to a Basemap.

4. That custom basemap was set to be used as the basemap for all new maps added to the Project.

5. Now when a new map is added, Pro crashes.

We have this in front of the development team and we're working on a fix.

Just wanted to share the info out in case anybody else experiences something similar - maybe this will help.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:25:25 GMT

We believe the original issue mentioned in this thread has been addressed and will be available at 2.1.

azendel‌ When Pro 2.1 releases, please upgrade and test your workflow and let us know - there should be a dramatic performance improvement.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

Justin_P — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 13:29:18 GMT

I REALLY hope this is true. It is so frustrating when it takes several minutes to finish doing simple things like adding or removing layers from the map or when a tool outputs a new layer to the map. It just sits there with the buttons grayed out. I have many SDE layers pulled in, but these simple operations are very fast in ArcMap pointing to the same data.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

Justin_P — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 20:59:27 GMT

So I got excited and installed the beta version of Pro 2.1. I can confirm the UI is still frustratingly slow when making any change that involves the layers. Just removing a layer that is in my local project gdb from the map causes the buttons to gray out for 20+ seconds. I have many SDE layers and some web services pulled in, but you can add/remove/change layers no problem with the same exact setup in ArcMap.

We cannot switch our team over to Pro if it takes an hour just to add all the layers you need to the map. After that you have to wait a long time for the results of any geoprocessing operation to get added to the map.

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

KoryKramer — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 21:32:24 GMT

Justin, the beta snapshot may have been from a build before the fix was installed. As mentioned above, when 2.1 final is released, test performance there and if it isn't running well, I would recommend logging a case with technical support to troubleshoot.

Thank you!

Re: Interface constantly lagging and hanging. Anyone else experiencing this? Can anything alleviate it?

AZendel — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 20:50:52 GMT

I've been using the final (non-beta) release of 2.1 for a few days now and most of these problems seem to be gone! I haven't run into a slow interface issue yet, but I'll post it if I do.