I'm working with large sets (20,000+) of pushpins. When I map them using lat/lon and standard symbols that come with MapPoint the map runs quite smoothly. When I start using custom symbols the map becomes very very slow to scroll around. My custom symbols are as small or smaller than the built in symbols and i've tried several different file formats (.bmp, .cur, .ico etc..) without much success. Importing the pushpins is not my problem; my main concern is having a map that runs smoothly with a lot of custom symbols on it.

Is there a way to optimize my custom pushpins so that they get the same performance as the built in symbols? Is there a way to modify the standard symbol file? I'm familiar with VB and I'd be happy for a code based solution.

thanks

Glenn Kirbo, jr.

Hi Glenn,

I did not know it was slower. Anyway it could help to first find out wy it is slower. I can see 2 reasons:

- Because they are loaded from disk over and over again at each refresh
- Because on some obscure reason the small bitmaps occupie mutch memory. Maybe task manger can help here.

If it is the former then a RAM disk can help to put the bitmap files on. If it is the latter then we just need more memory I assume.

Maybe there are other issues as whell but I cannot come up with others at the moment.

Can anyone help?

I never heard of a way to "optimize" the custom pushpins and there is no published way to add to the build-in pin other than what you hay already done.

What is the resolution of your custom pushpins? 16x16? how many colors?

Did you try the RAM disk idea?

have you tried another computer by chance?

The best example I know to give you is to take one of the standard pushpin image files, rename it, and import it as a custom symbol.
You can download the standard pushpins from Microsoft at:

[url] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en [url]


Using the EXACT SAME SYMBOL imported as a custom symbol slows down performance dramatically when large sets of pushpins are used (in my case 15,000 or so). This true on the 5 high end/up to date computers I've tested it on.

I've been unable to find the actual pushpins that the application uses in my program files directory which leads me to believe that the standard symbols are built in to the application in some special way. I'm hoping that someone has had this problem before and figured out a way to slip a home made pushpin into the application bundle.

Hi,

Did you already try a RAM disk ? Or did you figured out if it was memory issue ?

Thank you for taking the time to help so far.
I've tried the RAM disk and it helped a little but there's still a big lag when i use custom icons... even when i test it with microsoft's icons that are identical to the build in ones.
I used Extra Drive Creator Pro:
http://www.download.com/Extra-Drive-...ml?tag=lst-0-1

I'm not super familiar with RAM disk optomizing... basically i used the application to create an artifical RAM drive and then put the icons there and then imported them into map point.

any other ideas?

thanks
glenn

Hi Glenn,

No more ideas at the moment. But do you have enough RAM installed ? Because even with a RAM drive, windows will swap to HDD if not enough free RAM availab.e

Wilfried

I took the same map and monitored system performance while zooming in and out. I took screen shots of my task manager's performance window while mappoint was at peak performance. I tested 3 senarios. (1) Build in Symbol (great performance), (2) Custom symbol on RAM drive (too slow and jumpy), (3) Custom Symbol on regular hard drive (too slow... performance about the same as with the RAM drive symbol).

Processor usage seems to be the hangup.

I've provided a link below a PDF with all three screen shots, my hardware information, and information on the custom icon files I'm using.
http://www.kirbo.com/MapPoint/


thanks

Glenn

I think you may have reached the limit of the system - a combination of the number of pins and the external pin definition.

I would stick with uncompressed bitmaps as MapPoint has less work to interpret these into a usable form. Beyond that, I think you have to accept it and/or try to work around it.


Richard