Improving graphics performance in DIAdem 11.0 Report?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.
Otmar D. Foehner
Business Development Manager
DIAdem and Test Data Management
National Instruments
Austin, TX - USA
"For an optimist the glass is half full, for a pessimist it's half empty, and for an engineer is twice bigger than necessary."