Experiencing two problems with illustrator

[Tinman1028]

Hello there-

This is one of my first posts so please forgive if posting two questions in one thread is looked down upon.

I am having two issues:

1. My Illustrator is running suspiciously slow and I am wondering what I can do to speed it up or reset some setting without loosing my saved preferences to speed it up? I just switched from Apple to a custom built Windows 10 64bit machine. It has 32GB of ram, a SSD (Samsung EVO) and a Gigabyte 1080TI GPU. I am working with a 118 MB file that I am saving locally. I am using many custom patterns that are complex (halftones). I have experienced this slow down on my 2013 mac but thought that this computer should be able to handle it fine. However, moving across the screen, zooming in and out is pretty unbearable. Even selecting an item takes a second or two. I have GPU acceleration turned on. I have not really tried any solutions as of yet, no registry cleans no setting refresh. Please suggest.

2. My second problem may be related to the first. Whenever I use the reflect tool... it takes 3-10 seconds to actually work. Sometimes moving my cursor to my second monitor triggers it. Sometimes just waiting. This has been present since I have installed Illustrator on this machine. I thought this was perhaps related to my old GPU that I just swapped out for a 1080 TI but the swap did not resolve the issue. I have found similar posts with no solutions.

Thank you for any advice. I built this system to make a workhorse of a computer and am bummed that it's performing sub optimally.

-Ivan

[Monika Gause]

you could try this High CPU usage due to CEPHtmlEngine

Do other files behave the same?

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

I would like to know if the steps suggested by Monika worked for you, or the issue still persists.

Kindly update the discussion if you need further assistance with it.

Thanks,

Srishti

[Bill Silbert]

What version of Illustrator are you using?

[Tinman1028]

Hello everyone-

My apologies for not answering earlier. I left on a vacation and am just coming back.

I have run some tests based on your suggestions and here is what I found:

In regards to the overall slowdown of my file:

Illustrator Version: CC (Most Current)

File Size: 758 MB (Saved locally)

Contents: Mostly Vector Elements including complex patterns, NO gradients, Vector Halftone Patterns and several linked bitmaps.

Behavior: File loads blazingly quick. As I begin moving across my 16 artboards everything is smooth and seamless. However, the more artboards that come into view the slower the system becomes.Panning across the artboards becomes laggy, jumpy and I get random freezes. If at this point I attempt to move anymore the file may actually freeze for a couple seconds. If I let it sit it returns to extremely quick, smooth and responsive speeds. Perhaps this is normal but I have never experienced this in such a fairly straightforward file on such a overpowered machine.

Computer Behavior: Here is the kicker. Under the worst AI (and sometimes PSD + IN) load that I can force upon this computer these are the specs.

CPU: When I begin to scroll across my artboards the CPU jumps to 4% and when I zoom out to see all artboards and move back and forth across them the CPU peaks at 20% That's it! At this point however I am already experiencing freezing and hangups.

Memory: The memory is slightly different and may peak as high as 47% but it never crosses above 50%!

GPU: The highest I have recorded it is 4% (I am running GPU acceleration).

So as you can see the computer us not even close to maxed out on anything. What gives?

To answer the remaining questions:

Does this happen across other files?

Yes. I notice this happens most on files where I am using vectorized halftones or textures. So... yes, I am using very complex shapes with a lot of points. But this is exactly why I built a machine that I thought could handle it. I obviously suspect that increasing the amount of artboards makes this problem worse but again.... I was hoping a powerful machine would be able to crunch this with no sweat.

The reflect tool dilemma.

The Reflect tool taking 5-10 seconds to activate happens in every file. I have now found many people that have this issue with no resolve. And as other people have found moving the cursor out of AI sometimes speeds up the activation of the Reflect Tool within AI.

Thanks!

-i

[Srishti Bali]

Hi there,

Thank you for all the information. This is not a usual case, we need to solve this on a live troubleshooting session. Please contact our chat team at Contact Customer Care

I would also request you to share the results on forum thread as well so that it can help others too.

Thanks,

Srishti

[Tinman1028]

Will do, thanks. I have narrowed down the problem to using vector halftones in Illustrator. For some reason this causes all the problems. I suspect any complex vector texture will act the same. The weird part about this is the system does not max out or come anywhere near maxing out on Memory or CPU or Graphics. As my post states up top CPU hovers around 9-20% and Memory is usually at 40 as the AI screen is frozen with the "Not Responding" tag as it processes my art.

Thanks,

-Ivan

[Tinman1028]

Update: Attempt #1 with Adobe staff to fix the problem was unsuccessful. We did a screen share and tried the basic first steps which were:

1. Reset All Preferences for Illustrator

2. Clear all temp files and folders

After that we lost connection and I have yet to reach back out to continue the fix. Will update as I find out more. I have since worked on two more files utilizing halftone vectors and they are DEFINITELY the problem. Whether it's my hardware or illustrator/// something is not liking processing vector halftones.

Thanks,

-Ivan

[Tinman1028]

Hey-hey Adobe world-

Not sure if anyone is still interested or has the same problem but for anyone out there that is I will update this thread!

Had my second screen share session with Adobe staff! Much different than my first. The person helping me was very professional, experienced and attentive. We spent 2 hours trying everything in the book to try to resolve this. The Adobe staff agreed that with my computer specs I should have no issue with Illustrating choking or lagging whatsoever. Despite this we were still not able to diagnose the problem other than to potentially suspect that this may have something to do with 4k.

However, going to a normal display (which we also tried) did not resolve the issue. The adobe staff found this issue very interesting and once again escalated my case further up the chain. I am not sure what this means but I feel like a VIP troubleshoot experiment now. They gathered a ton of info about my system, Adobe performance and my files that had the issue. Once they are able to examine them they want to do another screen share session and try to resolve the problem.

I found another thread dealing with this from a year ago with a lot of frustrated people that never got a resolution. I don't think they even got a response from Adobe on what to do. So hopefully this may help them as well. Also, thanks to Adobe staff and admin for advising that I contact support and taking this seriously.

That's it for now.

Thanks,

-i

[Tinman1028]

Final Update:

I had another screen share session with an Adobe staff. The results of which were somewhat disappointing.

After looking at the files I was working with the Adobe staff determined that the slow down and lag was caused by an overly complex vector file.

Not sure why this could not be ruled out in the first or second session saving everyone a lot of hours. And the first two Adobe staff were very surprised at how the file behaved and were very certain this was a bigger issue, one perhaps relating to 4k screens and illustrator. The last Adobe staff did not address this nor did they address the files I sent over, if they were tested or what the results were. Ultimately I feel a bit like this solution was the lowest hanging fruit that was given to close my case. I see this same issue with other people in the forum and do believe there is a bigger issue but for the time being will wait to see what happens... and continue using my overly complex halftone texture....

Thanks,

-Ivan