Why are my layer labels painfully slow to draw?

[Anonymous User]

So I'm loading in a bunch of layers created in ArcMap 10.1 with some pre-defined labels into ArcGIS Pro 1.3. Nothing too fancy. These labels draw almost instantly in ArcMap, but take forever to draw in Pro.

Regardless of how many labels actually need to be re-drawn on the screen, it still takes a long time. I'll zoom to an area in the map with only 2 visible features, and 2 visible labels, and it'll sometimes take up to 15 seconds to redraw the labels.

The draw time varies a lot however, and seems compeltely independant of how many are visible.

What's going on here? The features themselves are almost instant to draw. I've had to remove labels entirely during demos because of the performance problems.

[WendyHarrison]

Hi Luke,

Let's try to get to the bottom of this.  We'll need to get through some questions first.

Which label engine are you using?  Maplex? Standard?

You mention that you can repro this on just two features - what type are they? points? lines? polygons?

Do you have label classes with SQL queries set up?

Do you have an advanced label expression that you're using?  Is it querying out features to label differently?

How are you labeling the features?  basic positioning? or are you getting into advanced fitting strategies and conflict detection?

Easiest thing would be to get me an mxd/data that shows the two features you're able to repro the slowdown with.  That way I can easily compare the map in ArcMap and then in Pro.

thanks

Wendy

[Anonymous User]

Hi Wendy,

Sorry for the delayed reply. Figured out it's the basemap that's the problem. Pro appears to be pre-rendering the basemap even beyond the current map extent before it finally draws the labels.

I've noticed basemaps are pretty fast at rendering in other web maps (e.g. almost instant in ArcGIS Online) compared to Pro. The difference seems huge, should this be the case?

I'm using the standard label engine on about half a dozen layers. Three of these have label classes using SQL queries on a single attribute. Basic positioning.

Regards,

Luke

[WendyHarrison]

Hi Luke,

If you remove the basemap, the labels draw fine and there's no performance issue?

thanks,

Wendy

[Anonymous User]

Mostly fine when basemap is removed yes. Delay still seems a bit longer that ArcMap - but nothing too bad.

[JeremyWright]

Luke,

clearly it's specific to your map somehow (coordinate system?  Transformation?).

Can you send us your repro case?

J

[Anonymous User]

The map is in a projected system (ED50 UTM 29N) - which I've noticed does appear to significantly slow down the basemap drawing compared to the default WGS84 Web Mercator. Is this expected?

[ChristopherDeRolph]

Hi @JeremyWright  and @WendyHarrison . I have a I have a giant map (40"x60") with a bunch of layers and a bunch of labels. In earlier versions of the map, I could get them to draw in like a day. But I made some changes and now I can't get them to finish redrawing ever. Is there a best practices guide that could help me? Seems like Wendy's initial reply above gets at some of what I assume would be in a labelling best practices list, but figured I'd ask if such a think exists. Thanks!