topic Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow? in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

ClintonJenkins1 — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 17:57:05 GMT

I like ArcGIS Pro. It is clearly a step forward in many ways. But why is it so slow for what are very simple things that should be nearly instantaneous. For example, if I want to adjust the symbology of something, ever single step causes the program to whir and think for about ten seconds, even when the layer is turned off! What exactly does it have to think about when the layer is not even rendering?

Almost every action in the program seems to generate some unknown processing demand. I can understand if the map is updating or a tool is running, but it seems to be for everything. This really drags down productivity and leaves me frustrated. If it wasn´t for this, I´d probably start switching to Pro completely. With all these lags though, it is impossible.

None of the data are on the network. Windows 10 machine, 32GB ram, fast video card not even close to maxed out. Most data are on SSD drives.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

KoryKramer — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 19:18:31 GMT

Clinton Jenkins‌ There are a lot of things to look at over on Why does ArcGIS Pro have to be so slow??? if you prefer to troubleshoot this through GeoNet.

Otherwise, technical support would be a good option.

Esri Support Home

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

BrianE1 — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:06:19 GMT

I have been having the same issue since 2.0. Pro runs significantly slower (5-6x) when working on a network vs. locally.

Any explanation for this?

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

ClintonJenkins1 — Mon, 11 Feb 2019 18:04:11 GMT

My data are local, although with one basemap loaded. Oddly, things are just as slow to respond when I turn off all the layers and pause all the maps. It still does something every time I interact with the program. It´s almost like it redraws everything regardless of whether the map is paused or the layers turned off.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

DylanHarwell — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 19:52:02 GMT

Same thoughts. Each click, even just toggling layers on and off in the TOC, causes everything to gray out for several seconds. Also this Basic Geoprocessing in Pro is SLOW

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

JakubSisak — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 19:20:12 GMT

I am experiencing all of the above and more myself. In my experience the selecting/drawing/rendering issues are most noticeable when working with annotations and graphics in layouts. While working Pro is constantly rendering and drawing for so long that I spend a lot more time waiting for things to finish refreshing than actually doing anything. Because I can't upload large video files here, I am preparing a set of video captures and uploading them to my YouTube channel and will include some links when those are done.

Here is an example of one showing how slow selecting and refreshing of graphic elements in layout is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwStNdL-S6Q&t=32s

Note WRT the video capture - there is no map frame or data in the layout. just graphic elements and text. It takes several seconds for Pro to even acknowledge a selection has occurred as it "sits still" (often ~ 10 seconds). then as it commences to refresh and render, the refresh indicator spins for a long time each time.

My machine is older but the specs are as follows: Intel Xeon E2-2667 @ 2.9 GHz (2 processors = 24 cores), 32 GB Ram, Windows 10 Enterprise 64 bit, NVIDEA 1070 ti, OSDrive is a recent solid state HDD, etc.

Also I am running OpenGL @ LOW rendering quality

UPDATE: I've tried a few things on a few machines and I think I am onto something. At least with graphic elements in the layout the issue "SLOW REFRESH / RENDER" seems to be directly related to the amount of graphics in the layout; a few graphics will refresh reasonably fast, 200+ graphics which is average for a typical static legend refreshes MUCH slower. Create a copy of the legend in the same layout (What I would often do in ArcMap as a backup of the legend) and the selection/render/drawing will slow down accordingly with the increased amount of graphic elements. There is some very inefficient looping going on behind the scenes coupled with the curious fact that ALL graphic elements have a corresponding item in the TOC. Yes. I understand the intentions of being able to order things like layers in Adobe but having 100s of graphics constantly updating on screen and in the TOC is causing some issues. Adobe doesn't seem to have this issue. I didn't even get into re-doing some really complex geology maps with 1000s of graphics yet. Not looking forward to it. I will take a video capture documenting this observation and post.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

TomBole — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 22:12:34 GMT

Hi Jakub,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll investigate the selecting/drawing issue with text and graphics in the Layout. Hopefully, this is something we can address with 2.4.

Thanks,

Tom

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

TomBole — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 14:48:46 GMT

Hi Jakub,

I believe the issue is moving subgroups. For example, when I convert a legend into a set of graphics I get a "parent" group element that holds all the legend graphics and a subgroup for each layer. The actual graphical elements, such as legend patch and text, are within each subgroup.

In this example, there is a parent group called "Legend" with a number of subgroups.

There are 846 individual elements within 104 subgroups in this test layout. My goal was to move all the elements to the right side of the layout page. With no groups involved, Pro took about 14 seconds to select all the elements and about 6 seconds to move. When I selected and moved the parent group "Legend" the results were about 5 seconds to select and 8 seconds to move. Not lightning fast, but not horrible.

However, if I move selected subgroups ArcGIS Pro's performance is indeed poor. In my example I selected each of the 104 subgroups (which took about 5 seconds).

OK, so far. But when I moved them - it took more than 5 minutes for Pro to finish the move!

Ugh!

This is a bad bug. I'll get this into the queue for immediate investigation.

Thank you for helping us identify the issue.

Tom

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

JakeNeedle — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 18:54:04 GMT

I am experiencing overall slowness of ArcGIS Pro 2.4. My data is located on a network but comparing the same processes completed in ArcMap with the same data, ArcGIS Pro is 50x slower.

One example is just grouping layers in the Contents Pane. With ArcMap this is completed in half a second and it takes ArcGIS Pro 10 to 15 seconds????? Can ESRI explain what is going on here?

Also moving data locally is not an acceptable answer to the issue. ArcGIS Pro is suppose to be next-gen and able to utilize more computing power but it is badly failing with simple tasks.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

George_Thompson — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 19:25:56 GMT

I would recommend you work with Esri Technical support on the performance issue to see if there is anything that can be improved. If we are able to determine an issue, the development team can review to see if it may be mitigated.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

BillHegman — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 19:55:33 GMT

Any resolution to this speed issue? We are teaching a course using ArcGIS Pro 2.4 for the first time this fall, and it's unusable over our network. We have the students copy the data to the local drive, do the work and then copy it back to the server. It's so fast and stable on the local drive but unusable on the network.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

Robert_LeClair — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 20:51:45 GMT

Bill - not to be flippant at all but have you logged an incident with Esri Support Services to see if they can determine why AGP performance via your network is painfully slow? If not, I'd recommend you do so to assist in troubleshooting this issue. Hopefully they can resolve the issue to make AGP more usuable in your environment.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

BillHegman — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 01:43:56 GMT

Robert,

Thanks. I will call them, but I want to do some additional testing before I call so I have a better baseline. I just need to find the time to do the testing. I suspect ESRI knows about the problem, and I'm sure a technical support call will consume a fair amount of my time because I'll have to start at the bottom of the queue and go through a lot of questions and sometimes painful testing. I'd love to bypass the initial call and get directly to a network expert, but in my experience, that doesn't always happen. I've been using ArcGIS Desktop over our network for 21 years and I've tested ArcGIS Desktop and QGIS across the network recently with no problems, so I'm pretty sure the problem is, in large part, ArcGIS Pro. Still many variables have changed this past few months including our location on campus, some of the inner workings of the network, some changes to the virus software and our use of ArcGIS Pro for teaching. So I'm hoping I can find some ways to improve the performance.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

JakeNeedle — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 13:42:53 GMT

I have contacted technical support about this issue last week and they have been no assistance in resolving the performance issues.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

George_Thompson — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 14:32:22 GMT

Nevermind you answered my questions in another post on the other thread: https://community.esri.com/thread/199197-why-does-arcgis-pro-have-to-be-so-slow

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

AdrianMarsden — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 12:49:51 GMT

For us, it is unusable for a daily GIS. Still. We only use it where we have to/

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

JosephMcGehan — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 08:14:21 GMT

We are using ArcGIS Pro 2.4.1. Like everyone else above we sometimes have issues. One trend is when people go offline in a completely disconnected environment, things like modifying symbols are painfully slow, some tools and functions like merge, are slow too. Maybe Esri have entwined something with the user profile, which goes Muppet show when roaming.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

PeteJordan — Thu, 20 Feb 2020 20:32:38 GMT

I'm going to attempt a few things mentioned here like the drivers and also using the debug tool <SHIFT-E> to try and see why at some times tools in editing work fine and then suddenly other times I get the spinning slow blue wheel of aggravation. Though I'm not very familiar with the readout and what my computer can do and what it should be doing in Pro (with such things as "FPS", "Triangles per frame", "Vertex & Index Buffers, etc).

I will also try switching from DX11 to OpenGL if I can figure out how and see if that also helps improve things...

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/3d-gis/troubleshooting-performance-issues-in-arcgis-pro/?rmedium=redirect&rsource=blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2016/07/26/pro_performance_troubleshooting

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

ShawnRoberts1 — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:36:03 GMT

I, like most here, agree with the poor performance of pro. I would like to make it my daily go to, but it makes a snail look fast. For ArcMap to draw our 70,000 parcel layer it takes a second ( I get it, its a lot of features). For pro to do the same work it's usually around 2 minutes, then two minutes again when it needs to redraw... I'd love to say it's just one layer but it's not, its global across all layers. If you watch the traffic between pro and a database server and compare it to ArcMap and a database server its astonishing how much more traffic there is with pro. At this point I don't even bother opening pro unless I need to publish to AGOL/Portal as I don't feel like wasting company money waiting for pro to chat back and forth with our servers hundreds of times per second before it starts to do anything.

I wish I could say it was contained to just drawing, but its pretty much everything about pro. If you want to run a GP tool, let pro think for a few minutes before opening a dialog box. Open an attribute table, same idea. The example below shows the length of time it took to drop a few fields from an attribute table of just a regular feature class, nothing special about it......That's 34 minutes and was still going.

My computer (and most who use GIS in our corporation) and our servers are all well above min specs (sometimes more than double whats required) , however these issues still persist on every machine. We always update to the newest version of pro once its stable and has the bugs cleaned out.

Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to bash pro (that's a can of worms). But I am very much on the train that ESRI rushed to get a minimum viable product out to the market without any real user testing or performance testing. The classic answer of "its your computer" or "its your servers" that are the problem, can only be said to so many people before it becomes glaringly apparent that its not just "your computer" its the fundamental way pro operates.

Re: Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow?

BillHegman — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 16:06:12 GMT

Shawn,

Couldn't agree more. I don't even know where to start, but I do know that the problems are related to wide-spread design issues with ArcGIS Pro.

I've been investigating the performance issues since the fall, and it's become glaringly apparent that it's not a viable product yet. I can't teach with it. I tried this fall. I'm working with a student right now on an independent study, and we have completely blown away our schedule because of the performance of the program.

ArcGIS Pro hits the server hard. As an example, running RegionGroup with the link field box checked took 12 hours to process a relatively small area. When I unchecked the link box, the process took 68 seconds! I've had the network provider capture the chatter and it's an unbelievable amount of reading and writing to the VAT.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It's not worth my time to report back to ESRI anymore because I would be on the phone non stop mostly to a front-line analyst that knows way less than I do about the program.

Unfortunately, ESRI is doing a big disservice to their users and shooting themselves in the foot at the same time. My students want to learn ArcGIS Pro if for nothing else to be able to show they have expertise to potential employers. Unfortunately, we are relying more and more on other programs like QGIS.