If your FluidFlow application is encountering any speed issues, this can be due to a number of factors, including:
1. The speed of the VPN/LAN/WAN network. We really wouldn’t know enough about your specific network to be able to suggest how to overcome any bottlenecks, but it might be worth talking to the Network Administrator to look at the Event Logs around the time when problems/bottlenecks occur.
2. Your anti-virus software is checking PSFF.EXE every time it starts up. To “fix” this:
- Add FluidFlow3’s application folder (where PSFF.EXE resides) *and* the FluidFlow3 “Public” folder – if you are using that - to your anti-virus ‘Exceptions’ list. For example, in AVG, this is done via “Settings | General | Exceptions”:
Note: Replace the paths shown above with your own on the server.
3. If you are uncomfortable with modifying your anti-virus exceptions list, you could install FluidFlow locally and point to the license/data/preferences on your shared server.
- Install FluidFlow3 on your PC and replace the “local” PSFF.INI with the PSFF.INI from your server’s installation, for example:
[Options]
NetworkAccessFolder=\\[YourServername]\[Path]\FluidFlow3
DataFolder=\\[YourServername]\[Path]\FluidFlow3\Data
PreferencesFolder=\\[YourServername]\[Path]\FluidFlow3\Preferences
Note: The “local” PSFF.INI file will automatically be created in the FluidFlow3 installation folder on your PC.
4. The logic within FluidFlow3 itself when it tries to solve a network model. Before FluidFlow3 tries to solve a model, it needs to ensure it has the most up-to-date equipment data and fluid properties. It does this by querying the “DATA” – the number of times this occurs is dependent on the complexity of the model, but will involve (at least) several MBs of data being transferred over the network.
To address this are a couple of options:
[Options]
NetworkAccessFolder=\\[YourServername]\[Path]\FluidFlow3
; The following entries are the default values for any new installation and can be left as is.
DataFolder=C:\Users\Public\Documents\Flite\FluidFlow3\Data
PreferencesFolder=C:\Users\Public\Documents\Flite\FluidFlow3\Preferences
Note 1: The PSFF.INI file will automatically be created in the FluidFlow3 installation folder on your PC.
Note 2: You need to update the NetworkAccessFolder entry to match the NetworkAccessFolder entry from your server installation’s PSFF.INI.
- Leave the network setup as it is, but make a copy of the server’s DATA folder on your PC. You can then use the ‘Database | Connections…’ menu item to point to this local copy. In this case, the executable (and license file) will still reside on the network server, but anytime you ‘calculate’ a model, the local DATA is used (thus reducing network traffic.)
NB: In both options, users will NOT share each other’s DATA folder, so any new equipment components added via the ‘Database’ menu items will be available only to the user who added them. The best way, currently, to merge records from the equipment database (aka DATA folder) from different users, is to use the Save/Load functionality in the Database Editors.