AutoCAD 2012 - 3D Orbit

[ColinHolloway]

Hi All,

 

I have having issues with 3D Orbit in AutoCAD 2012. I have attached a drawing that exhibits the symptoms.

 

The attached drawing contains blocks and simple entities to define a set of handrails. The original drawing contained all of the platform steelwork and was very slow and jerky when using 3D Orbit. I systematically removed items from the drawing until i was left with these entities.

 

When I use 3D orbit in this drawing (zoomed to show full extents) there is a lag between the mouse input and the orbit, however when I explode the blocks, the 3D Orbit works as expected with no perceivable lag between mouse and movement. This is also the case in the original drawing. The performance of the 3D Orbit also recovers when the layer that these entities are on is frozen.

 

I was originally suspecting drivers, hardware acceleration and object enablers, but this issue occurs on multiple machines with and without acceleration or OE's.

 

Thanks in advance for any input on this issue,

Colin Holloway

Handrails.dwg

[Dadgad]

The problem that you are having is likely because this appears to have been created with PRO STEEL. I opened it and ran '_PURGE', and removed 10 registered apps, and everything else that I could. I also AUDITED it, saved and purged again. It seems to be working just fine now. I had to rename it, as it was write-protected.

Handrails Clean.dwg

[ColinHolloway]

Hi Dadgad,

Thanks for the quick reply. The steelwork in this drawing was created using ProSteel so that doesn't surprise me. I had also run a purge. I opened your cleaned drawing and I am still seeing a performance difference between blocks and exploded. The drawing from you seems to orbit the same as my original drawing.

Did you try 3D Orbit after exploding the blocks? If so did you experience an inprovement in orbit performance?

Colin

[Dadgad]

I didn't use the 'PURGE' command, but rather the commandline '-PURGE' command which is much more powerful. I removed the 10 Registerd Applications mentioned in the previous post, which the regular PURGE command is incapable of doing. I didn't bother exploding the blocks because it was orbiting just fine on my machine, with no perceivable problems. I am working on 2012, and there seemed to be no issues whatsoever, very smooth, just as I sent it to you. Might it be quicker exploded? Perhaps, I just don't see where there is any need for greater speed. Are you saving your files as 2010 format, or to an earlier format?

 

Funny, I just noticed that the file is actually larger, after cleaning, than it was before, which seems rather counter intuitive. I was rotating it in 2D Wireframe visualstyle, and in an isometric perspective, as saved.

[ReMark]

What are you system specs?

[SLW210]

See THIS thread.

[ColinHolloway]

Dadgad,

The reason I need every bit of 3D Orbit performance I can get is becuase in the original drawing (with the ProSteel structural elements), the 3D Orbit is so slow that Adaptive Degradation kicks in and makes the model difficult to position. When I explode these handrail blocks (or freeze the layer they are on), I can switch Adaptive Degradation off and it still orbits perfectly. If the drawing was only these handrails then I agree, perfomance is acceptable.

 

ReMark,

Intel Xeon W3540 @ 2.93GHz

16.0 GB RAM

Windows 7 64 bit

NVidia Quadro FX 3800 (or Quadro 4000 depending on machine)

[ReMark]

What is the file size?

[ColinHolloway]

The file size of the original drawing (with ProSteel objects) is 6,030kb.

[ReMark]

Fairly large file. Can you freeze some layers to help reduce the performance hit you are experiencing?

 

The largest 3D file I've worked with was 38MB. My specs don't match yours (obviously) yet I managed to use 3D Orbit with no lagging.

[ColinHolloway]

I have tried freezing layers to get acceptable 3D Orbit performance and this is when I found that the only layer that really affected the usability of orbit was the layer that these handrails are on. While freezing most of the structural element layers will give some improvement, freezing only this handrail layer makes the orbit work perfectly. This is why I isolated these elements and focused on learning what was going on with them.

[SEANT]

It may have something to do with the LineType. AutoCAD has to compute the appropriate transformation for all those block inserts based on the intermittent Long-Short-Long.

 

 

 

Temporarily resetting the layer’s LineType to Continuous seems to help.

[ColinHolloway]

Hi SEANT,

Changing the linetype to Continuous definately gives some improvement in the original drawing, but not as much as freezing the layer.

[SEANT]

Hi SEANT,

Changing the linetype to Continuous definately gives some improvement in the original drawing, but not as much as freezing the layer.

 

 

That certainly makes sense. Freezing totally eliminates the display/regenerating overhead of the associated entities. If they’re not needed for the orbited visual, then freeze away.

[Dadgad]

Do you feel that ADAPTIVE DEGRADATION kicking in is a bad thing? I should think that working with files of that size it would be your best friend. Presumably you have fine tuned your FPS threshold and degradation priorities to suit the monumental tasks that come with working on such a gigantic file. I run my adaptive degradation maxed out at 60FPS, and have never suffered any untoward consequences of that, but my drawings typically max out in the 10MB range, so a very different story there.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Dadgad

[ColinHolloway]

Having the degradation kick in is not a bad thing. I have the FPS set at 60 and selected the degradation level that is acceptable. The thing I am trying to understand is why these handrail entities affect the orbit so much that when they are exploded or frozen I don't even need to have degradation set. I feel that there is something important here to be learnt.

[Dadgad]

I hear you, and do sympathize. One can never have too much understanding. Did you check out the recent thread which SLW210 referenced?

[ColinHolloway]

Yeah I read through that linked thread. Good info to keep on hand, but no solution for this one.

[Dadgad]

There were quite a few of us scratching our collective befuddled heads on that thread. Just wanted to make sure you had seen it. Good luck in your quest.