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

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10-03-2017 10:17 AM
AZendel
Frequent Contributor

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.

26 Replies
AZendel
Frequent Contributor

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.  

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TylerSchwartz2
Frequent Contributor

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.

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MarcoBoeringa
MVP Alum
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.

KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

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.

KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

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.

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KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

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.

Justin_P
Occasional Contributor

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.

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Justin_P
Occasional Contributor

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.

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KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

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!

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AZendel
Frequent Contributor

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.  

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