One Workspaces or Few Workspaces for different Instruments

[brucerobinson]

Hello Patrick and thanks.

Does that mean that you agree that if you try to launch NT8 with multiple simple workspaces open, such as I and Contrax reported, NT8 may freeze and hang because it tries to open them concurrently and maxes out resources, even if you have followed the Performance Tips guidance?

If so, meantime it might be helpful to users to provide such guidance in the documentation/'Best Practice'.

Kind regards,
Bruce

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello brucerobinson,

Thank you for your response.

The suggested feature has been assigned the internal tracking id of SFT-3384.

I do not agree that simple workspaces can crash NinjaTrader 8. I have not received a reproducible scenario and I was not able to recreate such circumstances on my own.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

[contrax]

Sorry for the Delay of my answers... i just got dissapointed with that.. but i still like Ninjatrader because it has a lot of customize charts... and the support is very nice.

But continue with the Thread.

Hello Contrax,
I'll try to fast-track this a bit for you with some 'real life' user experience.
What you describe is the way that it is, has been in 7 and there's little you can do about it.

As there is no 'Close All Workspaces' Menu Option or Hot-Key possibility in 8 you must manually close each one.
This is either a hugely laborious mouse-clicking menu selection exercise when using multiple workspaces, or, you can slightly reduce the task by assigning a hot-key to 'Close Workspace'. You have to Save Yes/No/Cancel by mouse click, no keystroke option.

For some reason I fail to understand, and have asked with no response and is buried in the graveyard that is the 'Feature Request' euthanasia road to dismissal, Ninjatrader has elected to do away with Windows shortcuts. Every piece of software I use implements these as did NT7 but they are hidden in 8 (by some fluke of keyboard key combination I did manage to get some Windows shortcut menus to pop up so they exist but are hidden, but not reliably repeatably).

Previously in 7 I could do all you want, as I want, using macros using Windows keyboard shortcuts with built in delays between workspaces loading. So I could macro 'Open Workspace1', delay until all data loaded depending on chart timeframes, historical data to load etc etc, and when all completed automatically start 'Open Workspace 2', etc. and avoid the dreaded Not Responding. Having fine-tuned that, what took 25 minutes to complete could be done un-attended. For years. Same in reverse to shut down. Daily start and finish routine. Now, I'm back to mousing around and stuck in front of the screen waiting. The only ray of sunshine on an otherwise dismally grey start and end to the day is it loads faster in 8.

The stock reply of 'see the performance tips' won't help in any practical or meaningful sense, nor will enhancing the spec of your PC. The problem you have discovered is that if you want to close quickly there is no Close All Workspaces and closing individually is tedious and laborious requiring mouse and menu. So you have a choice of the slow way, or Exiting the program. If you Exit, when you open NT8 (as 7 before it) it tries to restore previous state, opening everything at once, bottlenecks. That either freezes it and/or Windows sees it as Not Responding/Close the Program. Either way you're into the downward spiral of restarting where it crashed and re-loading all Workspaces with same result, deleting your .workspace file, or worse corrupting files. 'Twas ever thus. Best prevented.

In my experience it is not correct to say that opening multiple workspaces concurrently should not cause freezing. (Well we could debate whether it should, but it does. It did in 7).

In my experience no amount of performance tweaking of the nature recommended will have sufficient impact to affect what you want to achieve. All good practice to follow of course, but won't have a practical benefit regarding your issue i.e. with the number of workspaces and charts you want to have open. For example, I have 9 workspaces and several timeframes etc. They're not 'heavy' with data or indicators but if I were to try to open concurrently it will crash. Guaranteed.

To manage the effort required I use macros with delays to open each workspace and allow it to finish loading before opening the next, and a 'game pad'. Helpfully the game pad shows cpu usage per core & ram. No ifs ands or buts, loading multiple workspaces concurrently when opening NT8 maxes everything out, I can watch it happening. From what you describe of your workspaces it is likely to crash your machine on loading, as you are experiencing, and thus best avoided. In my experience no matter how high spec your pc, how 'light' the contents of your charts and workspaces, how much performance tweaking you do, avoid multiple workspace opening, or a workaround strategy (open what is successful concurrently, then open & close the remainder manually).

Opening and closing individually is a problem because it is cumbersome. It's just made worse in 8 because the 'workarounds' to make it manageable using Windows shortcuts in combination with macros and delays that were available in 7 and all other software I know are hidden in 8.

Hope this helps
Kind regards
Bruce

In fact i was thinking to go back and use Ninjatrader 7 but i dont know...

And yes, the problem is not the indicators... is that "bottlenecks" , when Ninjatrader is opening and has Workspaces opened in the previous session... Ninjatrader tries to open it everything at the sametime and that cause the problem and NT is freeze... If they only have like any delay for opening the previous workspaces opened... The "Program NT" itselfs is avaiable to work 100%.... But the NT tries to opening everything at the sametime and crash.. doesnt matter how powerful is the computer.. is going still crashing...

Just think in me... i have right now 19 workspaces open, each workspace is for one instrument/currency with 4 different timeframes... i have Indicators and already do the tips like "current bar close" and not "each tick"... I set between 30 / 60 days aprox (each chart doesnt have more of 250 candles...

I trade Long Term, so every certain of time , when my candle is going to close i take a look of my charts... I have a KeyBoard and Mouse with too many buttons for "hotkeys" and set it up for with one click change to the "next active workspace" and stuff like that.... and all good.


*The problem is when im going to close NT8 or im going to open it...

I know if i close Ninjatrader 8 with the Workspaces active... i know that is going to be impossible to open it again because is going to crash... i need to copy the workspace folder... deleted everything... opening with the "untitle chart", close. Copy back the workspaces, open and again one by one open each workspace.

*If i close one by one... for me is really a waste of time... Why a $1000usd software CANT DO THAT OMG!.

*If i close all workspace, next time that i open it.. i need manually open one by one.. and for real... another waste of time.

---

But whatever, maybe in the future can fix that.... the only thing that im doing for reduce my "wasting time" is... when im going to close it... I close the program, "SAVE ALL WORKSPACES" . And when i want to open it... i need to do the thing that already said... Copy workspaces, deleted, open nt8, copy back the workspaces, restart nt8 and then open one by one the workspaces...

And that my friends.. i reduce some of the "wasting time.."

************

brucerobinson, With Ninjatrader 7 can i work with all the workspaces and do all that without crashing? If yes, im going back to NT7...

[Lancer]

What is better if i like to see 4 different Timeframe for each Instrument?
Right now i have 17 Workspaces open and each Workspace have 4 Charts for 4 different Timeframes.

Instead of 17 workspaces, go with one workspace with 17 chart windows (17 markets), and 4 chart tabs per chart window (4 time frames per market). Save a chart template for each chart tab time-frame, per market. In the Windows task bar there will be 17 chart tabs from which you can select the market to view. Select a market, and there will be 4 tabs within that chart window from which you can select the time frame to view. Create a Market Analyzer window to track positions and P/L in all markets, using columns Position Size, Position Avg, Unrealized profit, Realized profit, Profit loss, and a Total row.


When starting NT8 with a large workspace, there will be a lot of data to load and calculate, and it may appear that the NT process is frozen and not responsive, but just let it be and allow it to finish. NT did not crash. It is just loading data and processing. If you have a lot of indicators and are loading a lot of bars of data, the process may take an hour or even longer, even with a fast processor and lots of memory. The first few times, open Windows Task Manager to monitor CPU% to see how long it takes for NT to load and process the workspace, then you know what time you need to start NT prior to when you want to trade. For Monday AM trading, I load my large workspace on Sunday night. It is 9 MB and takes 2 hours to load and process on a fast Xeon 6-core.

[brucerobinson]

Hello Contrax,
I think you've got some comprehensive information from which to decide upon an approach that will best suit your desires.
In your experience, mine with 7 & 8, and Lancer's, loading multiple Instruments at start up whether taking a single or multiple workspace approach can affect performance. Whether this is it induces freezing, 'apparent freezing' i.e. Task Manager showing Not Responding but it will complete (for Lancer, overnight!), Windows' 'NinjaTrader is not responding', crashing or after completing subsequent hit to performance are all reported.
If you know, you can 'manage' that in the ways Lancer & I have articulated so hope it helps.

To try to help you settle upon a strategy:
- single Vs multiple workspaces. Patrick advises no hit to performance. I don't have experience that would contradict. The issue you encountered was the associated cumbersome opening & closing, as I.
I used single in 7, & 'managed' the resource-intensive operations sequentially on starting up using macros & delays. I used a setup and approach (time-frame specific templates etc) similar to that suggested by Lancer.
In 8 I had 2 issues that resulted in choosing a multiple workspaces approach - I wanted to group instruments i.e. currencies, commodities, stock indices, European & US Session etc so I can see selected multiple correlated instruments together on multiple screens, rather than switching/tabbing singularly as necessary on a laptop as per your requirements, and second, I could load each workspace (or not) sequentially.
In 8, to my understanding there is an advantage in using tabs rather than separate Windows in that the non-active tabs use less resources than Windows which are all live.
However, if I understand your objective, you want to view 4 time-frames at the same time, not in tabs in one Window per Lancer's suggestion and switching between the tabs to see the 4 timeframes? (Iirc earlier you asked if to have 17 instruments in tabs in a window so I'm thinking you want 4 timeframe windows each with 17 instrument tabs so you can select an instrument tab and see 4 timeframes).
The other facilities that you may want to look at if you're not familiar are Instrument Linking and Time-frame Linking.
Anyhow, hopefully you can sort out which way to go that suits your needs best and are not further confused as a result.

Would I suggest using 7 instead for what you're trying to achieve? A definite no. 8 offers advantages over 7 for what you want to do. 7 doesn't offer advantages over 8 for what you want to achieve.

Good & relevant update information re: the start up loading issues you have been encountering - Release 15 will be available for public download tomorrow. I have had other issues un-related to this thread that it is expected to address and have installed it. The loading time for each of my workspaces is reduced by around 50% with this new build so that can only be beneficial.
My 'setup' has more charts, data series, timeframes etc in multiple workspaces (this isn't 'Setup Top-Trumps'!) than it seems you're after and on a lower spec PC so you should be able to get there, and 8 is blisteringly fast compared to the setup I had on 7.
Good luck.
Kind regards,
Bruce

[contrax]

Hello, yes im watching 4 Different Charts at the same time. (Same Instrument but 4 Different TimeFrame). And thats all....

So i have open those workspaces for different instrument and just change it.

I was thinking to do that, only 4 windows chart and 17 tabs for each window chart but i think Patrick says that is the same thing to have all those workspaces...

Ninjatrader should have a Delay for open each Workspaces and not try to open everything at the sametime.

[contrax]

BTW... Right now im preparing my charts for my long term trades. And each workspaces manually takes to open about 5 secs... Then if Ninjatrader Allow in the setup the delay for each workspace for about 6secs between them at the "start up". That can fix the problem very easy.

I can open Ninjatrader, and then go to the 1st floor for some wather or go to the bathroom. And when i back everything should be ok.

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello contrax,

We did not receive your log and trace files.

Please follow the steps below to manually attach your log and trace files to an email to platformsupport[at]ninjatrader[dot]com with 'ATTN: Patrick H' in the subject line and a reference to this thread in the body of the email.

• Open your NinjaTrader folder under My Documents.
• Right click on the 'log' and 'trace' folders and select Send To> Compressed (zipped) Folder.
• Send the 2 compressed folders as attachments to your email.
• Once complete, you can delete these compressed folders.

I look forward to assisting you further.

[contrax]

Hello contrax,

We did not receive your log and trace files.

Please follow the steps below to manually attach your log and trace files to an email to platformsupport[at]ninjatrader[dot]com with 'ATTN: Patrick H' in the subject line and a reference to this thread in the body of the email.

• Open your NinjaTrader folder under My Documents.
• Right click on the 'log' and 'trace' folders and select Send To> Compressed (zipped) Folder.
• Send the 2 compressed folders as attachments to your email.
• Once complete, you can delete these compressed folders.

I look forward to assisting you further.

Ok, more later i send you to you email. Want i do that after a crash of Ninjatrader?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickH]

Hello contrax,

Thank you for your response.

As long as you advise of when the last crash occurred we should not need to wait for another crash.

I look forward to your response.

[contrax]

Ok, i just bought a new computer:

i7 8700k
GTX 1080 Ti Extreme
32gb ram ddr4
SSD M.2 1TB


And now i can load all my workspaces at the sametime without any problem... hahaa at the end.... Yes.. was the Specs.

Thank you.