Tips for Reducing Processing Memory Requirements

Memory efficiency is a key aim of MapLink Pro Studio, however, out of memory errors can occur. The major processing facilities provided (layering and layer loading, clipping, filtering and tiling) are the primary means of helping you to achieve high performance. There are however many other ways in which you can use MapLink Pro Studio to give the best possible performance. Some of the most important issues are covered below. The discussions assume that the target platform for the map is Windows, but the issues apply equally (with the appropriate changes of terminology) to X11 target platforms

General

If large files are being used then the most important option is to ensure that MapLink Pro doesn’t show the data unless specifically requested to. To accomplish this, from the main toolbar Tools, select Options. On the General tabpage, ensure the Automatic Data Loading option is not ticked.

Raster Data

If Raster data files are being used then the Raster File Loading options can be adjusted. To achieve this, from the main toolbar Tools, select Options. On the Processing tabpage, in the Raster Load Options, Raster Loading, select Optimised for Memory and experiment with increasing the Maximum Raster Cache Memory to upto 2/3 of the available system memory.

Vector Data

If Vector data files are being used then the following options can be adjusted:-

• Adjust Vector File Caching size. From the main toolbar Tools, select Options. On the Processing tabpage, in the Caching pane, increase the Allocated Vector Tiling Cache Memory. Note: This is disk space not system memory.
• Use Input Clipping, e.g. if not using all the coverage of a VMAP dataset, then setting input clipping to the area of interest not only reduces the memory requirement but processing will also be faster.
• Use Feature Masking. If your dataset contains features that you do not need in the output map, remove them using feature masking rather than by setting the rendering of the features to "no style". Even though the features with no rendering are not visible, they will still be included in the output map. Unnecessary features in the output map will increase the tile sizes and thereby reduce performance.
• Use more layers producing smaller tiles which can have increasing amounts of features.
• If you are using Shape data enable the File Streaming options.

Terrain Data

If you are processing a large Terrain database then the amount of memory and time to process can be reduced by disabling the ‘Display raster preview of terrain on layer re-load’ option on the dataset.

This setting can be found on the Dataset configuration panel. From the tree-view select the Terrain dataset and right click the mouse button. Select ‘Terrain Configuration…’ a dialog box will be displayed with this option.

In addition turn off the ‘Automatic data load’ as mentioned above.

Processing Data

A faster processor and more memory will allow large maps to be generated faster.

MapLink Pro Studio is available as a 64bit program or as a 32bit program with large address aware flag set.

If you are processing very large datasets then you may need to use a more powerful machine with 6Gb or more of memory with a 64bit Windows operating system.

For extremely large raster/GeoTIFF images MapLink Pro Studio provides an option that splits the image into smaller, more manageable sized images. See Raster File Loading with extremely large rasters and some vector datasets you may still need to ask your data supplier to split the data into smaller chunks.