Leveling taking a long time

[Vic]

Hi All,

Every now and then (like now ) Leveling starts to take a long time to
calculate. I've been leveling this plan often for the past month or two and
it has taken the normal time to level (a few seconds). As of yesterday it
now clocks for about 2 minutes. It works, but I was wondering if there was
something to look for that causes it to "think too much".

Any thoughts?

 

[Hans]

Leveling performance is heavily affected by the number of tasks, resources and assignments in your project. Even more important is the amount of timescaled data in your plan. Do you have lots of splits, small tasks, contoured tasks, ... in your project?
Lots of constraints, deadlines, dependencies, etc. also have a negative influence on leveling performance.
In addition, leveling performance is affected by the leveling options you select: e.g. leveling on weekly base is significantly slower than leveling on daily level.
Do you use the option 'Clear leveling values before leveling'? If not, try enabling it and see if it makes a difference.

Btw, are you using Project 2003 or 2007?

I hope this helps,
Hans



Projectopolis



Vic wrote:

Hi All, Every now and then (like now ) Leveling starts to take a long time to calculate. I've been leveling this plan often for the past month or two and it has taken the normal time to level (a few seconds). As of yesterday it now clocks for about 2 minutes. It works, but I was wondering if there was something to look for that causes it to "think too much". Any thoughts?

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Vic,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

It sounds like corruption is setting in! If you suspect a corrupt file, you
could try the suggestions in FAQ Item: 43. Handling project file corruption
and/or bloat.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address:http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials

 

[Vic]

Thanks guys!

I think I found the problem. We're using MS Project with Team Foundation
Server (TFS) and it does some goofy things sometimes. In this case it
changed my settings for Calculation Mode (Tools-Options-Calculation) from
Automatic to Manual. I was told that happens sometimes and no one knows why.

I did also notice that Project suddenly wasn't re-calc'ing dates until I
leveled. Which then took forever. So it was calculating AND leveling
together. When I set it back to Automatic, the calcs were done as changes
were made and when I level it now takes the normal amount of time.

But I'll keep your note on corrupt files because I've had that happen before
too. Thanks!

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Vic, and thanks for the feedback

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials