DWG file and Mac so slow!!!!

[Aurel9360]

Hi all,

 

I'm having some issues with importing .dwg files in Vectorworks 2024.

I'm working on a MacBook Pro M1 Max 32go of ram.

 

When I import .dwg files. The navigation gets very slow, its impossible to work with it....

In the activity monitor, the memory usage on VWX goes up to 45Go...

 

I'm trying to get informations on other forums but I can't get any solutions. I tried different import settings 2D/ low res etc...

Still the same.

 

If I open the .dwg file with auto cad it runs perfectly fine.

 

Please fin the .dwg file attached

 

Any ideas???

SO1358_SO1359_Beryl_P4_8_OUT_Cabinet_Dimension_Drawing_V1_230313.dwg

[Aurel9360]

here is the vector file after conversion.

Is it running slow on your side?

Test.vwx

[Aurel9360]

I also tried on Vectorworks 2023. Slightly better but still slow.

[Pat Stanford]

Yes, it runs relatively slowly on my M3 with a lot of RAM.

 

But if you move the User Origin to the Internal Origin it works a lot better. Currently the object are sitting over 100,000 meters from the origin.

 

Double click the box at the top left intersection of the ruler bars and you will get a dialog box letting you move the origin. Choose the Set User Origin to Internal Origin option and see if your drawing speed does not improve.

 

But this is a relatively heavy file with 177,000 objects.  If you don't need all the details (specifically the text embossed on the objects) it should get much faster if you delete them.

 

Another possibility to speed it up would be to group portions of the drawing so that VW does not have to draw 300,000 selection handles every time you move something.  It should only take a couple of minutes at most to select each page and Group it. Then you should see much better redraw performance.

 

[Aurel9360]

Thanks Pat,

It is actually better with the origin set to 0.

 

And I wil group the objects.

 

I Was just wondering if it was an issue with my Mac or the .dwg file.

 

It's just really frustrating to see how it's slow on VWX compare to Autocad or others. But I guess that's the way VWX works.

 

 

[Jeff Prince]

When the dwg is imported, it's converting over 500,000 objects....

How these are converted will influence how snappy the file is.

It's a 2D file, but if your Vectorworks is setup to convert everything to 3D, things will slow down.  

 

The title blocks contain many things that are causing problems, delete them.

Also, grab all the groups and ungroup them, place the resulting object on the layer plane.

Once you delete them and purge, things should behave.  I got the file to respond fairly quickly with those changes.

 

A little deeper and you find...

The Chinese characters found in the file could also be causing a problem.  There are unimportant graphic orphans floating around the drawing space.  There are scaled symbols, both symmetric and asymmetric.  Dealing with that stuff could help too.

 

 

[Aurel9360]

Thanks for those tips Jeff. I will try them too

 

[Tom W.]

Also, check the scale of the objects. Everything is rather large. The red circle is your 5km safe working zone around the Internal Origin. The geometry fills the screen:

 

[Jeff Prince]

2 hours ago, Tom W. said:

Also, check the scale of the objects. Everything is rather large. The red circle is your 5km safe working zone around the Internal Origin. The geometry fills the screen:

 

I think that's a function of how you imported it.  If you import as millimeters and ignore the invisible layers, it will pop in correctly.

 

Vectorworks has never explained why, but I found the "5km safe zone" does not apply if you have geometry at the origin.  I've had site models over 50 miles across without issue, as long as they are centered on the origin.

[Peter Vandewalle]

Also check on the hatch definitions.

Often users scale dwg's after import because of wrong unit conversion during import. Units are almost always wrong in dwg files.

If you scale the dwg after import, hatch definitions won't scale along. This results in thousands or even millions of hatch lines that need to be calculated when zooming or panning. Of course this slows down the file.

Check all hatch definitions with a name in capitals.

[Tom W.]

8 hours ago, Jeff Prince said:

Vectorworks has never explained why, but I found the "5km safe zone" does not apply if you have geometry at the origin.  I've had site models over 50 miles across without issue, as long as they are centered on the origin.

 

Yes I remember this. You could perhaps understand if it was a single Site Model 50 miles wide centred on the IO but I think in your case it was multiple DTMs abutting each other...? So does that mean you can start drawing your geometry at the IO + build it outwards to a point 50 miles from the IO + all will be fine...? It's only if all the geometry exists outside of the 5km safe working zone that you will have problems? I've never had a model bigger than a km across so haven't had an opportunity to test this 🙂