Altium 19 Slow Performance

[cjurczak]

I have been using Altium since version 16, it seems to be a constant roller since going to AD19.  I'm currently on AD19.1.5 and the performance on my PC is poor.  Simple tasks like selecting/moving/deleting components is slow.  I select a component and a track, only to see the hourglass (or whatever you call it now) for ~1-2 seconds.  Move those components, hourglass for another second, delete objects, wait another second or two.  It just seems to be sluggish in everything I do, I've tried to reboot, minimize the projects, documents I have open.

Is anyone else seeing this type of performance with AD19, or is it just me?  I had a co-worker try on his PC, and it seems to have a similar performance issues.  I don't have a top of the line PC, but it's not a $300 walmart special either. 

i7-3770
16GB RAM
Win7 64-bit
Quadro P2000

Previous versions of AD19 have performed better, so part of me thinks something has changed on my machine, but I'm hoping the EEVblog crowd might be able to point me in the right direction. 

[free_electron]

in your project options :

project -> project options .
first tab ( Error Reporting ) under 'violations associated with components'  .
Find the one that says ' component revision is out of date' and 'Component revision has inapplicable state'  and turn those from whatever they are to 'No report'.

Those can cause delays depending on your setup / network / internet connectivity. They really should only be enabled if you are running a vault , and that vault is local on your network or vpn

[cjurczak]

Those are good tips, I did that and restarted AD19.  Unfortunately the problem still exists, but I'm glad to have made those changes since I'm not using ADvault.

[free_electron]

when you installed 19 : did you importyour settings from 16 ? if so : do a clean install of 19 without importing settings.

your hardware is perfectly capable of running altium properly.

I have 32 gig ram , Quadro K3000 and an i7-4800 and have AD19 , Solidworks and Catia open at the same time. Smooth as glass.

[cjurczak]

Sorry for the delay, I had a looming deadline that I had to content with recently.   I cam from AD18, and yes I believe I imported settings from the previous install.  I have continued to do a little troubleshooting, nothing conclusive, but I am seeing Altium hit my HDD heavily at time causing periodic slowdown (auto-save maybe?) that lasts 5-10 seconds.  Also it seems that Altium relies heavily on the windows registry accessing some strange seemingly unrelated registry settings considering what I am trying to do in Altium. 

I briefly spoke with Altium customer service about the problem, but they were quick to write it off as a graphics card problem.  Not really willing to go any deeper until I am using a "recommended" graphics card.  Are you running a solid state drive?

[free_electron]

yup. samsung SSD

[rf-fil]

Same here - the menu appears to take a few seconds to appear after clicking it. Altium 16 was OK.

[larry42]

Core i5-7300
SSD
8GB
Win10
Intel graphics (620?)

AD19.1.5 performance is pretty poor on my machine.
Did not import settings.

[free_electron]

intel graphics. problematic.

you need a good graphics card. especially iwth 19 now that they have the new renderer

[olkipukki]

I recently updated to 19.1.5 without any issues and side effects, but I have installed a new version separately.

I briefly spoke with Altium customer service about the problem, but they were quick to write it off as a graphics card problem.  Not really willing to go any deeper until I am using a "recommended" graphics card. 

Your Quadra P2000 is equivalent to GeForce GTX 1060 that suggested by Altium as the recommended system:
 
https://www.altium.com/documentation/19.1/display/ADES/Altium+Designer+-+((System+Requirements))

Did you tell customer support that?

Are you running a solid state drive?

Well, I would not imagine if somebody still using HDDs for core system...

[olkipukki]

Core i5-7300
SSD
8GB
Win10
Intel graphics (620?)

AD19.1.5 performance is pretty poor on my machine.
Did not import settings.

Is it laptop?
Are you student who lucky own Altum (almost) for free?

That's okay machine for browsing, email, Word/Excel etc... come on, if you spent toward 5 digits on Altium and "save" a few hundred bucks on hardware beyond common sense.

[Codex]

There are delays in Altuim that your PC performance will not effect.  These delays will always bee there. These are external server delays, as Altium gets and pass a large amount of metadata back and forth to a range of servers.

Whenever you touch a component it uses ciiva.com and octopart.com and other servers to track your BOM, do other operations you do with components. When it shows a component properties dialog this causes fields to be populated from these external servers, hence your waiting for those servers.

Same with configuration/preferences and other stuff. 

There are some serious security issues with this.

Altium is no longer a PCB software company, its a Marketing company now, it collects data and is using this to expand into all places in the electronic suppliers industry.

 

[Fire Doger]

There are delays in Altuim that your PC performance will not effect.  These delays will always bee there. These are external server delays, as Altium gets and pass a large amount of metadata back and forth to a range of servers.

Whenever you touch a component it uses ciiva.com and octopart.com and other servers to track your BOM, do other operations you do with components. When it shows a component properties dialog this causes fields to be populated from these external servers, hence your waiting for those servers.

Same with configuration/preferences and other stuff. 

There are some serious security issues with this.

Altium is no longer a PCB software company, its a Marketing company now, it collects data and is using this to expand into all places in the electronic suppliers industry.

This.

I use a pc with lower spec's than larry's and I have no issue.
Once I noticed this kind of lag and it was because I was using Mouser as a supplier in these parts.

[3dgeo]

I know it's kinda old topic, but I'm having same issues – schematic window very laggy, selecting/moving takes more than a second.

I doubt it's my hardware: 16 core Xeons, 64GB RAM, 2 RAID0 SSD, 1050Ti, WIN7...

Anyone got this sorted out?

[Pseudobyte]

AD20 should fix the schematic rendering issues. The are replacing the schematic rendering engine with a direct X implementation.

"A smooth and fast schematic experience awaits thanks to DirectX in Altium Designer. This new implementation smoothes out zooming, panning even dramatically speeds up copy and paste functionality."

https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/playlists/altium-designer-20-whats-new#playlist-main_video_H3uHYRBWAgCcXczRbDG9WW

In the mean time you may be able to mess with the GDI+ setting and see an improvement.

[T3sl4co1l]

Got a lot of objects in the file?  Got SCH/PCB List panel open?  If so, set it to view selected items, not masked/all.

There aren't really compile settings for SCH but there's live DRC for PCB that can be turned off.

Tim

[3dgeo]

PCB window is not laggy, lagging only when copying, moving in schematic window. What I did notices that if I click and drag on the object and mouse gets moved on the other object (after a second lag or so) Altium starts to move object that mouse is on, not the object mouse was clicked on.

Talking about DRC, is there a way to make via to stop from moving when it is near other object? Now if I move via I only see green stuff (object overlap) only when I let go mouse, I want real time DRC or that it not allow via to be moved more.

I'm new to Altium, but man, some things make no sense, like having different locations to define grid and snapping step size... Tho I have to admit Altium is way more intuitive than other software I tried.

Edit: I tried Altium with my slow 12+ year laptop, no lag what so ever, what gives?

[AlexanderPanov]

I installed AD20 but meat a lot of bugs there.
After this I installed AD19 with "load preferences from newer version."
I saw the same bugs which you describe here: If I was zooming the schematic by mouse well I didn't see any effect until clicked on the sheet and etc.
Schematic graphic didn't update instantly while moving sheet by mouse.
I deleted AD20, AD19 and installed AD19 again (with default preferences) and got better schematic behavior.

[cjurczak]

This week our IT department forced us to upgrade to Win 10, and we upgraded to AD20 as well.  Altium overall performance has been improved, but I don't know what fixed the issue.  My previous Win7 install has been used from AD16,17,18, and 19. 

[Pseudobyte]

It is probably AD20. Like i said before they changed the way schematics are rendered. They use directX now.

[3dgeo]

Mine is AD20 as well, but it's not owerstatement when I say it works like crap... Extreem lag in schematic editor. I switch from EasyEda to avoid lag, but I'm not lying – Altium is way slower. Just to rename something takes 5 seconds. Am I the only one who have bugs in PCB editor like when in routing mode clicking on via icon makes no difference? I have to deselect routing mode by clicking mouse right button, only then I can pick via tool.
Also I'm getting some grid misalignments that I can't get rid of (attached) – I want to punch my screen...
There is a lot more bugs I found, but I can't be bothered to remember/write them all.
I just can't wrap my head around the fact that program that costs 10K can work so badly... It seems that it's very hard to make good EDA software....

I don't know what to do, I'm looking at that crap on my next monitor and thinking should I keep going with that enourmous lag or just delete it and go back to using EasyEda cos trust me it worked way  better. Also I lost a lot of work cos Altium just crashed for no reaason.

So frustrated at the moment.... Pile of crap...

[thm_w]

Have you tried downgrading to v19? I've had no issues with losing data, you can set it to auto save various back up files as well (it might be on by default, check the History folder, etc.).
If you are *actively* routing a trace, then you don't click the via button, you can do ctrl+shift+scroll to change layers and it will automatically drop in a via. Press Tab to set up the dimensions of said via.

Grid issues, maybe you had snap to grid disabled at some point.

I'm surprised someone would go from easyeda to altium.

[aabbcc]

So I'm trying to learn altium again. Tried some time ago with v18 and it seemed to work ok from what I can remember. However now with v20 is super slow...

Just selecting a pin in when creating a footprint takes 1 second for it to load the properties panel, clicking outside the pin again on the work area takes another second, etc....

For example, trying to draw this resistor symbol takes approx 1 second for every time I have to click and change the direction of the diagonal line...


Is there nothing I can do about this?

Specs:
Surface sp4
i5-6300 2.4GHz
8GB Ram
Integrated graphics, intel HD 520
256GB sdd

Do I really need to buy a dedicated workstation with an i7, 16gb ram and a dedicated graphics card for this?

[free_electron]

So I'm trying to learn altium again. Tried some time ago with v18 and it seemed to work ok from what I can remember. However now with v20 is super slow...

Just selecting a pin in when creating a footprint takes 1 second for it to load the properties panel, clicking outside the pin again on the work area takes another second, etc....

For example, trying to draw this resistor symbol takes approx 1 second for every time I have to click and change the direction of the diagonal line...


Is there nothing I can do about this?

Specs:
Surface sp4
i5-6300 2.4GHz
8GB Ram
Integrated graphics, intel HD 520
256GB sdd

Do I really need to buy a dedicated workstation with an i7, 16gb ram and a dedicated graphics card for this?

On a Surface ? you're joking right ?

[thm_w]

Blueskull mentioned the schematic will constantly re-compile, I'm not sure if that is something you can disable in the options (like online DRC). Also dedicated GPU required.

I would just go back to v18.