Why does ArcGIS Pro have to be so slow???

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08-01-2017 11:31 AM
ericmeyers1
New Contributor III

Why is ArcGIS Pro so slow? To select assets, field calculate, display layers, change symbology... the easiest of tasks that are commonly utilized within ArcMap are a drag on the software.

When will ArcGIS Pro become faster than ArcMap? That will be the day it could replace it as the goto product for GIS professionals.

262 Replies
Paul_Christensen
Occasional Contributor

Well come back today and try again. Pro actually responded pretty darn well. Nearly what I would expect from the next gen platform. Not quite there, still some lag with menus, but I was able to traverse the entire parcel pretty efficiently.

Did yall come in and mess with my machine overnight?

curtvprice
MVP Esteemed Contributor

It occurred to me that one of the things that could bog down Pro (especially on a machine that has limited CPU) would be the auto-indexing capability. It is somewhat unclear to me from the help article exactly what gets indexed, but if folder connections are auto-indexed by the scheduler, that could slow things down. One thing to try is to turn that off and index manually (or set it to index at a time when you know you do not use Pro [but are logged in] during your daily routine.

Update the search index for project items—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS Desktop 

ChristophHoeser
New Contributor II

Konfiguration: 64bit W7, 8GB RAM, Intel i5 @3,1-3,3 GHz

a.)

no other Programm running than Arc GIS PRO 2.3

1 shapefile (GADM) imported into project's file geodatabase = 256 features

project stored on local USB3 drive

new column "area_sqkm"

task: calculate geometry: takes exactly 38 MINUTES

finished without any error messages, values visible in attribute table, stored project

re-opening of project not possible: damaged database

b.)

compared to QGIS: less than 1 minute, no problems

ThomasColson
MVP Frequent Contributor

"project stored on local USB3 drive" is your problem there. Arcview 3.2....Pro 1789.345 (coming out in 500 years) will never work when accessing data or project files off a USB, not even USB3.0. 

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MarcoBoeringa
MVP Regular Contributor

Hmmm... I run a +500(!) GB PostGIS database based on OpenStreetMap data for the whole of Europe of an external USB 3.1 connected (sometimes over 3.0) 2TB Samsung EVO SATA drive in an Oracle VirtualBox instance running Ubuntu as guest system for PostgreSQL (the USB drive is connected to a Core i7 HQ quadcore laptop running Windows 10).

I think you are underestimating what can be done with a reasonable drive, but I do agree having a newer faster NVMe drive instead of SATA, probably will boost performance.

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JimVernon
New Contributor

USB3 is capable of 5Gb/s, which is much faster than most people's network connections, and as fast as many SSDs. USB is not likely to be a bottleneck in this situation.

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JoshWhite
Regular Contributor III

This thread is getting hopelessly long and becoming hard to follow but I wanted to add my two cents.  I too have really struggled with the "slowness" of ArcGIS Pro.  It has many great features but even the most simple tasks seem to take much longer in Pro than ArcMap.  The typical response from Esri seems to be contact Support.  In my experience this has just been me going in circles trying to figure out what is wrong and Esri Support just guessing.  I did not have this experience with Support with ArcMap.  I know very little about system architecture so don't really understand what it means to be multi-threaded but if this is what multi-threaded means, then it is not a good thing.  I also saw that network connections are to blame.  I would venture a guess that the majority of Esri users have their data "on the network" because they run in an Enterprise environment.  This is something that Esri has pushed for years by the way.  I've specifically noticed that even simple geoprocessing tasks that would have taken seconds in ArcMap take 30 seconds plus in Pro.  For example, joining a table to your data requires a geoprocessing window to open which usually has a delay and then after making the appropriate changes to the script, pushing run still takes several more seconds.  Individual tasks taking seconds longer is no big deal but a series of them really adds up over the course of a day.  My more recent experience has been with working with Excel tables in Pro.  That is a totally different topic but still relates to poor performance in Pro.  This process has been quite painful and has resulted in hours of frustration even though I have been following the advice in the Help section. 

Josh White, AICP
Principal Planner

City of Arkansas City
KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

Josh, the join performance example that you bring up is something I think the development team is already looking into depending on the specifics of your case.  When you run the Join, what does the actual processing time show?

I've seen cases where a project may have multiple maps, layouts, tables open, etc. and the perceived lag may be due to the application syncing back to all threads.  So maybe that is what you're seeing, maybe it isn't.  Could you let us know?  

Also, depending on what the details are behind your comment about working with Excel in Pro, ArcGIS Pro 2.4 will see a revamp in Excel support which should make it very similar to how Excel is read in ArcMap.

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JoshWhite
Regular Contributor III

Kory,

Here is the latest example.  I wish mine was only  0.78 seconds.  Now, to be fair, this was the one with the Excel table.  I believe I did have a number of multiple maps, layouts, and tables open.  I have since closed most and only have the required map and layout open but the overall performance has not improved.  The multiple tabs open is about convenience, if this feature was working well it would be a major enhancement from ArcMap due to the ability to see multiple maps and layouts at the same time but it does make sense that that could be a contributing factor to lowered performance.  Also, thanks for your comment about Excel at 2.4.  I am looking forward to it.  

Also, note again that this 7.84 seconds does not count the time it took to open the tool in the geoprocessing window which was probably several seconds more at least.  I can only guess at how long that part was.  

I also see the following the roadmap: Geoprocessing leveraging spatial databases - New options to run certain geoprocessing tools like Buffer, Spatial Join, Select, or Intersect as queries in databases that support these operations, which will result in improved performance.  

I'm hoping this will also help me out a lot.

Josh White, AICP
Principal Planner

City of Arkansas City
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KoryKramer
Esri Community Moderator

1. How long does that exact same join take in ArcMap using the Add Join tool: https://pro.arcgis.com/EN/PRO-APP/TOOL-REFERENCE/DATA-MANAGEMENT/add-join.htm?  What about using the right-click > Joins and Relates > Join (you may need to use a stopwatch to get an estimate as you don't get Elapsed Time this way)?

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