Topic Title

First off, I have posted this similar topic in the DataCAD 22 section, but wasn't getting many hits. Not sure if there are less people on the forums, using DataCAD 22 or what. I figured I might try posting in a more general space to see if it gains any traction. I have also emailed DataCAD, but haven't heard back. Hopefully they are not too inundated from the holidays and I will hear back soon. Admins, feel free to delete either post as necessary.

So I drank the Apple kool-aid long ago and have been in the Apple ecosystem. For the most part it has been great with very little hiccups. I have been through the struggles of having to run Parallels and setting it up just to be able to run DataCAD while I run MacOS in the background (2nd monitor). As of late, I have noticed that DataCAD has been bogging down a bit when I am zooming in or out, or when I have some larger files open. (I do feel like I am putting more and more info into the drawings - so I understand that could be part of the reason). It got to the point though that I went into Apple to see if there was actually something wrong with the computer, as it wasn't always just DataCAD that gave me an issue. After running various tests and finding out everything is ok, we started digging into DataCAD and some of the other programs I use.

While going over the specs/system requirements, the Apple Genius noted the first line in the "Notes" section of system requirements that states "... DataCAD runs as a 32-bit application on 64-bit versions of Windows." The genius stated that that there is my problem. The 32-bit application will be bottle-necked with the amount of RAM that it can access. So my laptop having 64GB of RAM isn't the issue, he said. I could have 128GB of RAM, and I would probably still have the same issue.

So is this true that DataCAD is stuck as a 32-bit application? Is there any reason it can't be 64-bit? Doing some google searching, it states that with a 32-bit application the max RAM it can access is 4GB. Whereas 64-bit theoretically could be up to 16 million TB. So why is it recommended to have 16GB for better performance, per the system recommendations? Is that so 12GB of RAM can be allocated to the rest of the computer? I haven't searched deep into the forums, but is there talk or rumors of going to a 64-bit application. I am sure developing a version for MacOS is out of the question (I know it has been brought up before), but I would think a 64-bit application could/should be something that is in the works. Or am I missing something?

While I don't necessarily want to move on from the CAD program I have been using for upwards of 16 years, I also don't want to be pigeon-holed or limited as to what I can or cannot imagine, draw, and notate because the program is maxed out with a somewhat outdated foundation. Please note I am not trying to "bash" DataCAD, as I love the program and what I have been able to create. I want to see it succeed and continue to grow, but am worried this is a bit stuck in the past if it truly has limitations like this. Just trying to understand things and develop a discussion.

[Mark F. Madura]

The performance of any software application is affected by many factors and is more nuanced than speed of the CPU and available RAM. DataCAD would certainly benefit from being a 64-bit program, and in fact, some of the image-related processing is now handled by 64-bit libraries.

There are also many metrics to consider from disk I/O to display performance. Working in memory, whether it be RAM or via the CPU or GPU is exponentially faster than reading/writing from/to disk or drawing to the screen. So, those events are costly from a speed standpoint. Having access to more memory won’t change that much. And while being able to move 64-bit versus 32-bit chunks of data at one time implies the same amount of total data can be accessed twice as fast is only theoretical. In practice, every aspect of the code would have to be structured to take advantage of it.

The way a program is written is also a big determining factor of performance, and this varies from one routine to another. You may have heard terms like ‘bloatware’ or ‘spaghetti code’ to describe software. Large programs like Revit or Photoshop can take a long time to start simply due to the number of dlls that need to be loaded. Most software programs like DataCAD date back 30 years or more, so some areas of the program are more optimized than others. Ironically, modern ‘best practices’ for structuring code can have severely adverse effects on performance due to overuse of ‘helper’ functions.

Here are some things that can have a big impact on performance, regardless of processor speed and available memory:

- Anti-virus Software
Excluding DataCAD’s executable (DCADWIN.exe) and related program and file folders from real-time virus scanning can help.

- A Faster Per Core CPU Speed
DataCAD does not currently implement multi-threading which is a programming technique to run certain tasks in parallel. As a result, the speed of DataCAD is determined by the core speed, not the number of cores.

- Discreet Graphics
Using a GPU like AMD or NVIDIA versus onboard Intel graphics can improve display speed. However, I suspect the benefit diminishes greatly as the cost of the GPU increases.

- More RAM for Windows
Windows 11 requires a fair amount of RAM for the operating system, then every service and program running requires its own memory space. So, not having enough RAM can affect all running programs if the OS needs to swap to disk. I would say 16GB is the minimum and 32GB is preferred.

- Virtualization Software
Virtualization software like Parallels allocates a portion of your Mac's resources to the virtual machine. The performance of the Windows application will depend on how much resources are allocated to the Windows environment. If the allocation is insufficient, the application may run slower than it would on a native Windows system.

- Drawing Structure
No two drawings are created equal, but I can tell you from experience that the way you structure your drawings can have a huge impact on performance. Here are some things that can bog down the program.

- Putting an entire project into a master file for production.
- Inserting symbols that contain tens of thousands of entities.
- Inserting a lot of self-references in a drawing that contains hundreds of layers.
- Enabling nesting on XREFs unnecessarily.
- Putting too much information on a single layer.
- Tying to work with large amounts of text or dense hatch patterns displayed.

We are committed to improving DataCAD. Migrating DataCAD from 32-bit to 64-bit will be a significant task like when we ported from 16-bit DOS to 32-bit Windows, and from a single to a double-precision database between DataCAD 10 and 11.

Your candid feedback is invaluable, and I appreciate the time you took to share your concerns.

Thank You,

MFM

It seems to me that if I'm never waiting for the software, it's fast enough. I kept my layers to a minimum, usually only 10-20 layers. I kept my x-refs to a minimum, on detail sheets, only 4-6 self xrefs; on plan sheets only 1 xref to my master plan. I put as much as I could on the master and then worked with plan sheets usually be managing layers in the xref. I know I could never whack keys as fast as James Horecka, but the software was fast enough for me. It's easy to turn off display for hatches, or just turn off the hatch layer if that has a lot of data. Being able set small size for display text is a game changer. I used to wait a long time just zooming and sliding on spec sheets. The only activity that ever seemed slow was the print preview, and it is always slower with lots of xref's and bitmaps.

Nice job, Mark and crew! You made my life easy since v6.