Recommendations for Improving Performance
The criteria for evaluating the test results of the CADMATIC Hull Benchmark are as follows:
- The Recalculate Views: A result of 12 minutes with a variation of +/-20% is considered normal.
- The Create Production Information: A result of 12 minutes with a variation of +/-20% is considered normal.
- In the ATTO Disk Benchmark, transfer rate of approximately 3 MB/s at a transfer size of 512 bytes is good. Lower speeds will be noticeable, at least with speeds lower than 1 MB/s.
The performance of CADMATIC Hull on a customer site depends on various factors, and there can be several causes for performance lower than this.
When attempting to resolve performance issues, first make sure that your setup meets the minimum system requirements. The following recommendations may help you to identify the causes and improve the performance of your setup.
Network Setup
Make sure that both the Hull server and workstations are set up for at least 1Gb of LAN speed. It is recommended that the file server has even more bandwidth (2-10Gb), to avoid bandwidth saturation of the server's LAN connection by one workstation.
Server Memory
Windows Server uses standby RAM memory for file caching (Mapped File). You should keep at least 2-4GB memory as free memory.
Disk Performance
On both workstation and server, performance may suffer if a non-hardware RAID controller is used, because the handling of small files is less efficient than with hardware RAID controllers. It is recommended to use a RAID controller that has onboard cache.
You can use the ATTO Disk Benchmark to determine the small file performance of your server and workstation(s).
Virus Scanner
Make sure the virus scanner on the workstation does not scan networked drives. Normally small parts from database files are transferred over the network. The virus scanner will cause the whole files to be transferred over the network because the whole file will be scanned locally and will cause major delays. Also, set nctmppath to C:\TEMP and exclude this folder from the on-access virus scanners.
Project Slowness Despite Good Benchmark Results
It is possible that the benchmark results are good but you still experience slowness with one or more of your projects.
In this case we recommend that you check the block area settings in the project(s). When block areas are set larger than the actual blocks, block coding can become very slow.
Contacting Hull Support
If you still experience slow performance after ruling out general IT problems, and you think that your setup meets all the requirements, you can contact CADMATIC Hull Support. The Hull Support can help you in identifying possible causes in your Hull setup and projects that might be causing slow performance.
Contact the Hull Support through the CADMATIC Customer Support Portal (preferred) or by sending an e-mail to hullsupport@cadmatic.com.
When contacting Hull Support, please do the following to help our support personnel analyze your case, determine the best steps to take, and generally handle your case as quickly as possible:
- Describe your issue as clearly as possible. What exactly seems to be the problem?
- Include your benchmark results from each test.
- Describe your network, server, and disk setup. Do they meet the minimum system requirements? Are they in line with what is described in this document?
- Mention if you suspect that a specific issue, or specific issues, in your Hull setup or project(s) might be causing slow performance.
- Provide screenshots as necessary.