Electrical Design Software | Elecdes Design Suite by Scada Systems Ltd

Project Cache

General

Elecdes Design Suite caches the information read from the drawings in the project to avoid repeating the time consuming procedure of reading the useful entity information from each of the project drawings. This cached information is stored in *.cache files in a subfolder of the project called "cache". The *.cache files are binary format.

Automatic cache update

Elecdes Design Suite makes use of a process in the background to periodically check if the cache is out-of-date and, if so, read the new information from any modified or new project drawings. This process is run from the SCADA Licence Manager program, which is always running independent of which Elecdes Design Suite module is being used. When this is working optimally there will be minimum delay when a procedure requires the drawing information, since recent changes will already have been read and cached.

You can set the time period between scans. The setting can only be changed directly in the settings file, EL32.INI.

Under a user's Common preferences, the section with the header [user-Common], look for the setting CACHESCANTIMER. You can create the setting if it does not already exist.

The following is an example for a user whose login name is "John.Smith":

[John.Smith-Common]

CACHESCANTIMER=60000

The default setting is 60000, meaning 60,000 milliseconds.

If you set it to 0 then it will disable the automatic scan. This will mean that whenever the drawing information is required, the current foreground procedure (e.g. Global Editing the project) must take the time to check the cached drawing information and re-read any drawings that have been modified or are new.

Erasing the cache

No information is lost if the entire cache folder is erased or if individual *.cache files are erased. The next time the drawing information is required it will simply mean that all of the drawings must be read as if for a new project, which will take longer than loading the cached drawing information. The cache folder and *.cache files will be recreated.

Alternate Global Edit Folder

If your project contains many drawings then the cache files can be large. If you are using a project that is stored on the network, you may wish to use your own copy of the project cache files stored on a local hard drive for improved performance. See the setting Alternate Global Edit Folder in EDS Setup, Preferences.