By default, when the CitectSCADA runtime loads a page it tries to load and display a bitmap image of the background objects on the page before all the dynamic objects are drawn. This can speed up page display on slow PCs. The fast display image is stored in a separate .CTF file for each page. If this file does not exist in the main project, CitectSCADA searches for it in each of the included projects, then checks them a second time. If it was not found, CitectSCADA displays the page by drawing each background object individually.

This process takes longer with an IDC since it has to send individual requests to Citect's FTP server to search each folder. If there are a lot of included projects or the network/internet connection is slow, this may take several seconds. CitectSCADA will perform the search every time a page is opened if it does not have a local CTF file for that page.

To disable fast runtime display (CTF) files, go to the Citect Project Editor | System menu | Parameters and add the following parameter:

Section Name: Animator

Name: FastDisplay

Value: 0

This will cause all nodes running this project, including the IDCs, to stop looking for CTF files. This is equivalent to setting the citect.ini [Animator]FastDisplay=0 parameter on each PC.

Alternatively, you could enable Fast Runtime Display in the Graphic Builder | Tools menu | Options on each of your development PCs. This would cause CTF files to be created whenever graphic pages are saved. It would be necessary to open and re-save each existing page to create CTF files for them. The IDC would then download the CTF file the first time the page was opened and would not need to search for it again until the [Internet]UpdateTime had expired (default: 24 hours).