Improving graphics performance in DIAdem 11.0 Report?

[Oliver76]

Dear Forum,

when working on a Report layout, the poor graphic performance of DIAdem is a real problem for me.

For example, many diagrams with lots of data are on one page. One opens the proficiencies of one of the diagrams and changes e.g. the curves color or whatever and closes the dialog window. After this, the whole Report page is refreshed - wich takes up to one minute, depending on the amount of data displayed.

The strange thing is, when I close the given dialog window, and while the report page is being refreshed sent DIAdem to the taskbar and open any other application window, the process of refreshing the screen takes only 1 second instead of 30 seconds.

The question is: Is there a tweak to improve the speed how DIAdem refreshes the report page? Or is there any workaround other than switching applications during refreshing?

Thanks a lot.

Greetings from Germany

Oliver

[Otmar]

Hello Oliver,

The easiest way to speed up the graphics performance in Report with large data files (or 3D graphs with lots of nodes) is to turn off the "Data Layer" (German: "Datenebene") in the "View" menu (German: "Ansicht").

That function basically turns off the display of all data in Report, but retains the axis systems, texts, etc., so you can still move them, place them and edit them without having to guess sizes. Once you're done with the report, simply turn the data layer back on and you're ready to create a PDF, print or save the result as an image file (JPG, BMB, etc.).

I think the performance difference you described (1 vs. 30 seconds) is due to the fact that once DIAdem has drawn a page, it retains an image in memory and will simply draw that image when you bring DIAdem to the foreground (or maximize it). After any edits you make to the report (e.g. change the color of a graph), DIAdem redraws the complete page from scratch, which takes much longer then just re-displaying an image that has already been drawn previously. Someone from the DIAdem R&D team could probably do a better job explaining this, but I think this is the explanation for the time difference in drawing.

Anyway, the "Data Layer" trick should hopefully solve your problem, let us know if that works for you.

Greeting from Austin, TX.

[Oliver76]

Hello Otmar,

thanks for the hint, I think turning of the data layer will do it.

But anyway, what I meant when comparing the "graphics performance", e.g. 1 s vs. 30 s, was that the diagrams etc. get drawn faster when I switch to another application while DIAdem is drawing the diagrams in the report screen. That is I see a report page, press F5 to refresh, an wait until the page is redrawn: 30 s. When I see the report page, hit F5, hit ALT+TAB tp switch to another application and hit ALT+TAB again immediatly, the refreshed report page is there after about 1 s. DIAdem seems to draw much faster when no one is watching.

Anyhow, thanks again and have a good afternoon

Oliver 

[Otmar]

Hello Oliver,

That sounds like a strange phenomenon, and certainly warrants further investigation through the DIAdem R&D team.

Can you let us know what version of DIAdem you are using (please check in Help - About ... andprovide the complete DIAdem version number, e.g. "11.0.0f3436")?

Also, would it be possible for you to provide a data set and TDR file for usto test with?

I tested on my PC (Intel T2400 DualCore Laptop) and get about 1 second to plot 1 channel with 20 million values and 7 seconds for 4 channels and 120 million values per channel (that's for 2D data.Are you working with 3D reports?

If you can provide some more input, we'll try and get to the bottom of this.