Make ArcGIS Pro Performance Just Decent

DarrylAlbert

I think it would be great if the performance of ArcGIS Desktop 10.x could be matched, at even 50%. Much of the great ideas and efficiency concepts built into the new software are zeroed out by basic performance problems. For example, it just took 2 minutes to cut a 5 acre polygon in half. The spinning blue wheel is our best friend here in our company. It gives us lots of time during the day to refill coffee, go for a walk, etc.

All sarcasm aside, it's a major problem. We have teams of IT staff testing and monitoring users and traffic to troubleshoot these issues for dozens, if not hundreds, of users across our company. It appears we do not have enough degrees and people available to get ArcGIS Pro to work satisfactorily. It shouldn't be this difficult and it didn't use to be.

Software licensing costs with ESRI continue to skyrocket while software performance tanks.

JakeSkinner

Hi @DarrylAlbert,

Are you experiencing most performance issues editing? If so, what type of geodatabase are you editing (i.e. SQL Server Enterprise Geodatabse, File Geodatabase)?

StevenFama

You are correct. ArcGIS Pro is so slow. In ArcMap I could Geocode my city in under 1 minute, now it takes almost 4 minutes. Rebuilding of a Locator in ArcMap 15 seconds, now 2 minutes. Starting up, loading a project I could cook a 4 course meal.

DarrylAlbert

@JakeSkinner it was a file geodatabase in the same file folder. The issue isn't necessarily about geoprocessing, editing functionality, or data connections, it much broader. This involves all of the seemingly unnecessary delays for simple things like clicking a button. What button you may ask, I couldn't say because it could be any button at any time under any condition.

I miss the days of just being able to work. I don't want to troubleshoot anything, we have spent countless hours at our companying trying to figure it all out, to no avail. My post is just an idea like all the others.

Thanks!

Darryl

MichaelVolz

Is your file gdb on a local drive or network drive?

AlexZhuk

Hi @DarrylAlbert,

I, too, recently experienced a great slowness on my Pro 3.x projects. I complained everywhere I could. It turned out I had a lot of Windows/network/hardware issues. When they all got resolved, my Pro returned to a good solid performance.

RTPL_AU

ArcGIS Pro performance issues need to be cut into distinct areas and addressed appropriately. I don't think diving into the data details is of much use these days as that is a per user problem that is usually quite easy to solve. My opinion of issues with Pro is that they are much more complex, the application itself is too fragile at the moment, and almost anything seems to break the install, the config profile, the cache, the user profile, etc - if you go by the advice handed out.

**Application and UI - all the stuff that are sub-par before you even touch data. Lag and being unresponsive to mouse clicks, bad UI design that require you to move your mouse from pillar to post across the screen all the time, and the dynamic ribbon layout that never seem to be where you want it to be and never show the tool you want because you dared click on something else to check a value in another window/pane. All the stuff, like timezone info, that you have to click through every single time you publish a layer because your data/jobs are such that scripting it would take as much time as opening and checking each layer before it goes out.
The multiple clicks & scrolls required every single time you want to add a FGDB and make it default (single click opo in ArcMap).

**Network and architecture - People are still using 1GBE links to corporate data stores built for Word & PowerPoint. Bring in complex ID management, weird hardware SOE, etc. and Pro is an unpleasant experience. Solving the problem is usually not in the scope of the user it affects. Guides that explain system architecture no longer exist (wiki . gis . com system Design Principles as example).
A lot of it I don't think is Esri's problem to fix but 100% Esri's info to make available to guide performance expectations.

**Data and project complexity - Large datasets, large rasters, complex geometry, complex coordsys chains, etc. are all solveable problems. In many cases, for me, Pro is much better than ArcMap in some cases with many large datasets open.
I can open a statewide property property dataset and run symbology, def queries, and so much more without any issues but heaven forbid I want to edit a 50 feature dataset's data in the attribute table. Moving fields around is an exercise in patience (a nothing burger in ArcMap to do the same thing on a vastly lower spec machine). The UI lag and non-performance affects me a lot because I do lots of small jobs with large variability in data, location, etc so I click a lot of things a lot of times - I can't just load a big dataset, click a button and sit back for 30 min.

**Windows and platform - which is best for Pro 3.6.0: .Net 8.19 or 8.22? Which Nvidia driver should you use? The latest one? Are you sure? Which AMD AGESA is best for a 7960X this week? Which performance profile should you enable on an MSI board for your 285K?

**Hardcore Bugs - Check that you have a valid license a 100 times before giving the UI back? Freezing or crashing when you Copy something? Overwriting the whole dataset because SQL queries are ignored? Due to the complexity of all the other points it is really hard to know if you have a valid bug, a bad switch, bad driver, bad Windows update so lodging a case can take hours/days of work. Getting a fix in the current version is not a given so you may have to eat the time required to do a workaround or the time spent reverting to an earlier version of Pro; but then endure another bug that was fixed in the version you just uninstalled.

My view is that until we start splitting these discussions into these core aspects all we will get back are the "reset/reinstall/get better network/check the system requirements/install latest xyz" comments.

Please mention if you have issues with other applications - a good test is to load a dataset in ArcMap (you've kept at least one perpetual license, Right?) or even QGIS.
I thought a tile package was just too large to be fast on my machine; until I saw it fly in QGIS with no lag whatsoever.

RTPL_AU

@DarrylAlbert
What version are you on? What you are describing is a bit unusual for most Pro versions except 3.2 & 3.3 that suffered from the excessive license checking bug.
I found that in some cases it would repeat the checks so many times that doing simple things while creating a very basic make can take minutes to complete.

DarrylAlbert

@RTPL_AU currently have 3.5.x and 3.6.0 but the issue persists with all versions. It doesn't matter if I'm working local with data stored on C drive, in a remote server environment with local LAN, or in the office on a local LAN. It's a company wide issue with entire IT teams dedicated to solving the issue with dozens of users that have the same problems.

RTPL_AU

@DarrylAlbert I don't envy your IT team.

I find it interesting that you have such bad performance across the board in your environment - I have a variety of computers I use with different versions of Pro. This was done on purpose so that I don't get stuck with a specific incompatibility, broken update of Windows, drivers, Pro, etc. that renders me unproductive. They all behave in different but nuanced ways. There are core issues on all of them but the way they behave at a point in time varies depending on latest non-Pro updates etc.

Starting with 3.5 I noticed a slow down over time (noted by others in here too) - the longer you run an instance the more likely it is to get cranky. I'm restarting instances after roughly 1-2 hours and after any major edit or complex layout.
I may have a few instances open at a time.

Are all your users on similar spec machines? Does anyone (work experience student...) have a slow/hand-me-down machine that seems to perform better than expected?
I'm asking because I am starting to think that Pro handles slower machines better - I've seen videos and demos done on laptops that perform better than a machine costing many times more can manage.
Think playing a 480p YouTube video at 1/2 speed vs a constantly buffering 4k clip at full speed on airport wifi.....

My other issue with Pro is that if it is my network, pc, server, Windows version, me, etc why doesn't LMStudio, Siemens Solid Edge, Fusion 360, Word, Excel, Corel, QGIS, Notepad, etc have at least some of the same issues? Solid Edge is no angel-app by any stretch of the imagination.

I'll be rebuilding a server over Christmas with the aim of having a full SSD array with a different encryption and compression setup as main datastore. 98.35% sure it won't make a difference but hey, it's something to do.

DarrylAlbert

Thanks for the responses you’ve provided. I’m hoping ESRI is reading this thread because there are too many factors that are influencing software performance. No one has time to deal with this and take note of all the different problems and to try and resolve each and every issue. And then start all over when a new version is released. On top of that, get billable work done in a timely fashion.

The software has been problematic since inception.