The most recent ArcFM™ Core Product Advisory Group (PAG) meeting took place on November 20.  During this meeting, Schneider Electric highlighted a set of core performance improvements for the Designer™ and ArcFM™ products – improvements that will boost overall performance and enhance the end user experience.

Schneider Electric will be delivering the improvements in two instances: some of the more immediate improvements will arrive in December 2013 for the 10.2 release.  Bigger changes will follow in mid-2014.  These changes will be ported to other releases after each instance.

What is being improved, and by how much?

For now, improvements focus on increased speed. The chart below shows average times to perform the actions listed in 10.2 Base (released in September) and 10.2 Base with Performance Improvements (released in December):

10.2 Base (in seconds):

10.2 Base with Performance Improvements (in seconds):

The total difference: almost 7 minutes in 10.2 Base, versus just over a minute and a half with the performance improvements.

How is this being done?

Schneider Electric has made several changes to increase response time, including:

• Not preloading all ArcFM™ tools on startup, but only as you need them 
• Using new Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and optimizing existing code to help stored display performance
• Changing to how GUs are synchronizing with CUs on open to reduce redundancies
• Indexing the Design ID field on any feature class and/or object class that might participate in a design
• Re-architecting how Feeder Manager Initialization Performance is done

Will these changes help me?

Try it!  Changes are available now.  If you have 10.2 or 10.1.1 test environment, Schneider Electric can get you a build to test.  The only request: let them know how the changes work for you.