File size: Line or polyline

[andq]

I've heard that you can reduce file size using polyline instead of line while drawing (or vice versa... don't remember) Could you advice please, is it true and what exactly should be used.

I think, why we would need the line tool at all if polyline more convenient... unless I am missing something... ?

[Jack_O'neill]

Well, I didn't know the answer to your question so I conducted a test. Started a new drawing and drew a 2" by 2" square using the polyline command. Then I constructed a 10 x 10 array of these squares 4 inches apart each way, zoomed all and saved. Hit the new button, did the same thing using only lines. The polyline drawing was 52k in size, where the one with lines was 56k. In this instance, it holds true that polylines will make the file size a bit smaller.

 

Which is better? Which should you use? That depends entirely on what you are drawing and the particular circumstances at the time. Say for instance you draw the square I mentioned in my experiment. If want to offset just one of the sides of the one drawn in lines, no problem. Activate the offset command, enter the distance and pick what I wish to offset and I get a nice 2" long line sitting out there beside the one I picked with which I can go off and do all sorts of intersting things. If I do that with the one drawn in poly lines, I get another square increased on each side (or decreased, depending) by the amount of the offset. If I had just wanted one line, I now have to trim or explode or otherwise edit that bigger square to get the line I wanted in the first place. That's not a bad thing, sometimes you want to do that too. If you're drawing a hollow shape of some sort like an extruded tube for instance, draw the outside, offset toward the inside the wall thickness, and there you have it. Fillets are increased or decreased accordingly and you can get on with drawing something else.

 

It just all depends on your needs at the time.

[Organic]

In the old days when computing power was reduced and storage more expensive, lines were used mroe often as the file size was lower when using lines over polylines. Today however where you can go buy a 1 TB (1000 GB) hard drive for $100 means file size is not an issue (within reason). I would certainly use polylines.

[Organic]

Well' date=' I didn't know the answer to your question so I conducted a test. Started a new drawing and drew a 2" by 2" square using the polyline command. Then I constructed a 10 x 10 array of these squares 4 inches apart each way, zoomed all and saved. Hit the new button, did the same thing using only lines. The polyline drawing was 52k in size, where the one with lines was 56k. [b'] In this instance, it holds true that polylines will make the file size a bit smaller.[/b]

 

I always thought it was the opposite of that. What happens to the filesize if you increase the sample size?

[Jack_O'neill]

Increased the number of squares x4, the poly line drawing went up to 60k, and the line drawing went to 72k.

[andq]

Hmmm... Interesting... Thank you.

[Organic]

Yes, but if you have 10 lines joined end to end, that results in a bigger filesize than if you had used 1 polyline to draw the equivalent. Polylines are designed to replace multiple line segments.

[eldon]

If you look at the data stored for a line, then each end has its coordinates, so for ten lines you will have twenty coordinates. If you have a polyline using the same ten lines, then you only have to store eleven coordinates.

 

If you start curve fitting the polylines, then the file size will increase over the straight line polylines, to take into account the curves.

[SLW210]

Here are my results....

I drew a 1x1 square out of individual lines, individual polylines, and continuous polylines, I then made them blocks. All are arrayed 10 x 10. I did them also at 100 x 100 and then you can really see the advantages of blocks and continuous plines. Pline1 is the continuous pline.

[alanjt]

If we were back in the day of being excited about having 100mb hard drives, I might understand this thread, but I just picked up a new 3TB drive for my server for right on 100 bones. Space is not an issue anymore. I had to fuss at the IT guy when I started where I am now to remove the 10mb limit on email attachments.

[andq]

I just did similar thing before reading it and my individual plines file was bigger then the one with lines

[Jack_O'neill]

Text for the polyline square:

Command: list

Select objects: Specify opposite corner: 1 found

Select objects:

LWPOLYLINE Layer: "text"

Space: Model space

Handle = 339

Closed

Constant width 0.0000

area 4.0000

perimeter 8.0000

at point X= 0.0000 Y= 45.0000 Z= 0.0000

at point X= 0.0000 Y= 47.0000 Z= 0.0000

at point X= 2.0000 Y= 47.0000 Z= 0.0000

at point X= 2.0000 Y= 45.0000 Z= 0.0000

 

Text for the square made from lines:

Command: list

Select objects: Specify opposite corner: 4 found

Select objects:

LINE Layer: "text"

Space: Model space

Handle = 7e6

from point, X= 2.0000 Y= 45.0000 Z= 0.0000

to point, X= 0.0000 Y= 45.0000 Z= 0.0000

Length = 2.0000, Angle in XY Plane = 180

Delta X = -2.0000, Delta Y = 0.0000, Delta Z = 0.0000

LINE Layer: "text"

Space: Model space

Handle = 7e5

from point, X= 2.0000 Y= 47.0000 Z= 0.0000

to point, X= 2.0000 Y= 45.0000 Z= 0.0000

Length = 2.0000, Angle in XY Plane = 270

Delta X = 0.0000, Delta Y = -2.0000, Delta Z = 0.0000

LINE Layer: "text"

Space: Model space

Handle = 7e4

from point, X= 0.0000 Y= 47.0000 Z= 0.0000

Press ENTER to continue:

to point, X= 2.0000 Y= 47.0000 Z= 0.0000

Length = 2.0000, Angle in XY Plane = 0

Delta X = 2.0000, Delta Y = 0.0000, Delta Z = 0.0000

LINE Layer: "text"

Space: Model space

Handle = 7e3

from point, X= 0.0000 Y= 45.0000 Z= 0.0000

to point, X= 0.0000 Y= 47.0000 Z= 0.0000

Length = 2.0000, Angle in XY Plane = 90

Delta X = 0.0000, Delta Y = 2.0000, Delta Z = 0.0000

 

If any of you have been following the thread about how to draw ortho and iso projections (of a pair of Visegrips), there's a quick and crude drawing I did in that thread last night that has a mixture of lines, plines circles and elipses...it has 81 objects and is 82k, drawn on the same template as the squares.

[designerstuart]

yes, arrays of 100 objects or more show files with lines to be many times larger than polyline counterparts - rather than the 5% or so differences shown above

in large files it seems it makes a big difference. although this is only where one polyline can replace several line segments. if the lines are converted to polylines without jouning segements, files remain the same size.

[andq]

If we were back in the day of being excited about having 100mb hard drives, I might understand this thread, but I just picked up a new 3TB drive for my server for right on 100 bones. Space is not an issue anymore. I had to fuss at the IT guy when I started where I am now to remove the 10mb limit on email attachments.

 

Can you imagine, we have strict file size limits for courseworks in our educational institution...

[Jack_O'neill]

If we were back in the day of being excited about having 100mb hard drives, I might understand this thread, but I just picked up a new 3TB drive for my server for right on 100 bones. Space is not an issue anymore. I had to fuss at the IT guy when I started where I am now to remove the 10mb limit on email attachments.

 

This is true. When I first started drawing, the company I worked for had a server that they had just installed a 120 Megabyte hard drive, and a Bernoulli box with dual cassettes. For the youngsters in the crowd, a Bernoulli drive was a shared floppy disc drive that used cartridges that looked like overgrown 3 1/2" discs. The would store 10mb each and back then cost about

$100 each. We had about 20 of those that stored all of our standard details and parts...the stuff you had to get approval from a deity to change. If you created a new standard detail, before it was committed to the Bernoulli it was more closely inspected than the paper drawings ever thought about being to make sure you'd followed all the guidelines about reducing file size as much as possible. These days, it's not unusual to work on single drawings that wouldn't fit on those devices.

[SLW210]

If we were back in the day of being excited about having 100mb hard drives, I might understand this thread, but I just picked up a new 3TB drive for my server for right on 100 bones. Space is not an issue anymore. I had to fuss at the IT guy when I started where I am now to remove the 10mb limit on email attachments.

 

I agree in many ways with that statement. I would like to know where you got 3T for $100 though, best I found has been 1T for $70, though I haven't been looking hard.

 

Your 10MB limit may be gone, but what about those you are sending files to? I am still in that stage here, 10MB limit and we also have .zip/.rar blocked in our email. I do some work with aerial photos and 10 MB isn't much.

 

True, that space is not an issue and storage space is cheap, RAM is even cheaper, but it is not that simple to IT and Accounting. I wish it was.

 

Some people just need smaller files, that is why I showed the difference blocks make in file size. Me I don't care, I have no problem telling the company president "I can not send you these aerials because they are to large for our email, here is the network path to them".

 

I am new here, I figure I will start shaking ITs tree in a few months and will see what kind of nuts we get.

[Jack_O'neill]

I agree in many ways with that statement. I would like to know where you got 3T for $100 though, best I found has been 1T for $70, though I haven't been looking hard.

 

Your 10MB limit may be gone, but what about those you are sending files to? I am still in that stage here, 10MB limit and we also have .zip/.rar blocked in our email. I do some work with aerial photos and 10 MB isn't much.

 

True, that space is not an issue and storage space is cheap, RAM is even cheaper, but it is not that simple to IT and Accounting. I wish it was.

 

Some people just need smaller files, that is why I showed the difference blocks make in file size. Me I don't care, I have no problem telling the company president "I can not send you these aerials because they are to large for our email, here is the network path to them".

 

I am new here, I figure I will start shaking ITs tree in a few months and will see what kind of nuts we get.

 

Typical conversation with IT department:

 

You: I have an idea. Why not add a 2 TB drive to our system. Here's one I found for $70!

IT Dept: No..sorry. There are compatibility issues with that device. Translation: Who are you to make suggestions to me about IT?

You: How can that be? It's says it's certified for use with our operating system. Have you ever even seen this one?

IT Dept: There's more to it than that. You don't understand, and it is too complicated to explain. Translation: Go away, my coffee is getting cold and you are interrupting my Call of Duty session.

You: Ok, but its clear we need more storage. If you can send me the specs for our system, I'd be happy to find one for you.

IT Dept: This is not something you can get at a department store or mail order house. It has to be tested and approved to rigourous standards and there's no budget for capital improvements this quarter anyway, so don't waste your time. Translation: Now I am PO'd...my COD session just expired while I'm talking to some fool who thinks he knows computers -fires off nasty email to your boss-

 

Later that same day:

 

Your boss: If you don't have enough work to do, I can certainly find you more. You worry about your job, and let IT take care of the computer stuff. You're here to use them, not improve them....got it?

 

You: Yes, of course. Sorry sir. Won't happen again. Translation: It will be a cold day in @#$% when I offer another suggestion. From now on they get exactly what they ask for &*&^$#@ no good deed goes unpunished....(muttering and cursing continues for another hour minimum).

 

Been there done that. The bigger the corporation, the worse it gets too.