AutoCAD 2016 Xref bloat

[Silvercloak]

Hi guys,

 

I don't know if this has been posted before. Forgive me if I'm repeating something.

 

For the past couple years particularly since I've started working with companies who predominantly use Civil3d, I'm finding longer and more frequent occasions for lag. It's gotten so bad that I spend a good portion of my day screwing around on my phone and browsing the web while I wait for AutoCAD to "think".

 

I'm not proud of it, but wtf can I do while I wait for what has been at times, as long as 15 mins (even 30 mins on some occasions) for it to get it's crap together.

 

Today I worked on a drawing that easily 30mb in Xref attachments. Some drafting changes that should have easily taken 15 - 30 mins took me 3.5 hours with drawing crashes, xref loading, and flipping back between drawing and xref...

 

I don't know what to do. I've purged excessive scales from all xrefs, purged regapps, done a complete purge in each xref and it makes little to no difference.

 

If anyone has any tips on how to make these drawings more efficient please let me know. I hate feeling like a slacker at work, yet I can only work as fast as my machine and software will allow.

 

I don't have my hardware specs on me at the moment, but my computer at work is no slouch by a long shot, and yet still...

[Dadgad]

Your profile says you are suing Autocad 2010?

 

You mention Autocad 2016 in the thread title, does that mean that you might be receiving dwgs done on 2016, and working on them with Autocad 2010?

 

I can relate big time. I long for the good old days when my typical drawing had 20 or 30 layers instead of 1,800.

 

My first impression is that you may have huge amounts of DGN flotsam in the drawing, which will not be removed, even by the commandline -PURGE in Autocad 2010.

So, are you using 2010, which won't remove that crap, or 2016, which should purge orphaned bits when opening the dwg?

 

You might want to create a COPY of your drawing, and try Overkill, Recover & Audit on it, also.

[Silvercloak]

Sorry I hadn't paid attention to that. I'm using 2016, I'll update my profile more in depth tomorrow when I'm at work.

 

But yes, I think there's too much DGN garbage in there. We used to have DGN purge with 2013 but when we updated to 2016 I was told that the DGNPurge was integrated into 2016.

 

I did run audit on each file... I guess I could try running recover and overkill on them as well.

 

And yeah - I really miss the good old day when the only thing in my drawing was linework. For all that Civil3d is supposed to streamline things - it seems to take even LONGER to get anything done.

 

Silvercloak

[Dadgad]

Yeah, we switched to ProSteel about a year ago, and all that "SMART" doesn't come cheaply, in terms of data file size and speed.

 

Yeah, one of the nice improvements made to Autodesk products starting in 2015, was the DGN slaying behavior, and purging of Orphaned bits.

 

I had to go back through a whole bunch of files a few days ago, because they are Autocad blocks which are being Xrefed into a ProSteel Model.

I had to open them all in Autocad, and purge out a bunch of PS Layer names which had been added to them inadvertently, when they were opened in ProSteel, which adds abut 30 or so layers to every Xref, and that flotsam adds up pretty quickly, especially if you have a lot of Xrefs in your Model. 1800 Layers, spare me!

[jammie]

Have found the command -exporttoautocad useful in the past. AutoCAD will export a clean version of the working drawing to a new file. Civil3d objects will loose there intelligence but if it's only the line work you require it's certainly worth trying. Have seen anywhere between 10% and 75% reduction in file size.

[RobDraw]

Make sure you have the object enablers: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/downloads/caas/downloads/content/autocad-civil-3d-2016-object-enabler.html.

 

When I deal with civil stuff for XREFs, I do a lot of clean-up. If you could upload a particularly troublesome XREF to DropBox, we could take a look at what you are dealing with.

[rkmcswain]

Hi guys,

 

 

 

If anyone has any tips on how to make these drawings more efficient please let me know.

 

As a test, delete all of the layouts, then in model space, erase everything visible.

Now SaveAs another DWG file. What is the size of this new DWG file? If it's more than a 100kb, then the drawing is probably polluted with a bunch on non-graphical bloat.

Post this 'empty' DWG here and let someone take a look.

[Silvercloak]

Have found the command -exporttoautocad useful in the past. AutoCAD will export a clean version of the working drawing to a new file. Civil3d objects will loose there intelligence but if it's only the line work you require it's certainly worth trying. Have seen anywhere between 10% and 75% reduction in file size.

 

While that would be really funny to do (you would hear the screaming all the way to wherever you live once they discovered the data loss) it wouldn't be so well for my job security

[RobDraw]

So, you are required to use the live civil file as an XREF?

 

Personally, I would use a cleaned up copy and update it as changes are made.

[Silvercloak]

So, you are required to use the live civil file as an XREF?

 

Personally, I would use a cleaned up copy and update it as changes are made.

 

I work in Civil3d and we use Data references as well. It can't really be avoided.

[Silvercloak]

As a test, delete all of the layouts, then in model space, erase everything visible.

Now SaveAs another DWG file. What is the size of this new DWG file? If it's more than a 100kb, then the drawing is probably polluted with a bunch on non-graphical bloat.

Post this 'empty' DWG here and let someone take a look.

 

I just might take you up on that. Just got into the office but when I get a minute I'll give that a shot and possibly upload the file.

 

Thanks!

 

Silvercloak

[Silvercloak]

Updated my profile there - hope that helps clarify things a little.

[RobDraw]

Did you just change that in your profile? I could have sworn we were talking about AutoCAD 2016. This thread should be moved to the C3D section.

[Silvercloak]

Did you just change that in your profile? I could have sworn we were talking about AutoCAD 2016. This thread should be moved to the C3D section.

 

My apologies, I did just update my profile. I couldn't find a Civil3d specific forum so I posted in here.

 

Silvercloak

[RobDraw]

A mod has to do it for you. One should be along shortly.

[Silvercloak]

As a test, delete all of the layouts, then in model space, erase everything visible.

Now SaveAs another DWG file. What is the size of this new DWG file? If it's more than a 100kb, then the drawing is probably polluted with a bunch on non-graphical bloat.

Post this 'empty' DWG here and let someone take a look.

 

So I went and did my best to clean out this drawing as you suggested, even running purge and scrubbing it out the best I could. Went down from 9mb to 1.5mb.

 

It looks like it's retaining WAY too many linetypes and text styles.

 

Also - after I had erased all visible items the file remained 8mb big. It wasn't until I ran purge that it went down to 1.5mb. This is insane.

 

Here's a link to the file.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/716765/Xref%20Base.zip

[RobDraw]

You're right, there does seem to be way too much left behind even after deleting the stuff that you had on a couple frozen layers.

[ReMark]

I got the file size down to 232KB. I was left with 5 layers (including layer 0), 7 styles (including standard), one linetype (continuous) and one block (CLOSEDBLANK).

[Dadgad]

I got a missing SHX files message when I opened it.

I didn't assign an alternate, and I was only able to get it down to 1.5Mb too.

 

 

Whoa, just saw ReMark's post, well done!

[ReMark]

In the process I may have gotten rid of some "stuff" the OP would like to retain. On the other hand I don't think 232KB is the absolute lower limit.