Mike_M Posted September 5, 2024 Share Posted September 5, 2024 I've got a DWG file containing various 2D views of a set for a theatrical production. Plan View, Side Views, etc. When I import this into Vectorworks it brings in 184,188 objects. This really slows things down. I've looked into a few things I can do on the vectorworks side to alleviate this issue. A suggestion from 2019 was to enable "Unified View" but this is buried in 2D legacy settings at this point. What I did do reset the User Origin to Internal Origin, Imported as 2D only, and put everything imported via DWG into various groups. Doing this seems to have helped a bit but not by much. The only thing that did help was deleting a bunch of "stuff" from the DWG that I did not specially need for the time being. I would eventually have to go back for this information, deleting other objects to compensate. This can be incredibly tedious. I've tried importing the DWG normally and as a reference, both having the same results listed above. The machine I work on here has no issues with Vectorworks files of similar size/detail in both 2D and 3D. I've drafted a handful myself that are more complex. They likely just don't end up containing 184,188 objects. If I open the DWG in AutoCAD I have zero issues with it. Pan, Zoom, pretty much every command reacts at the speeds I would expect. I'm less familiar with AutoCAD and I'm wondering if any one has a means of simplifying the file prior to import to minimize the number of object imported. It seems as if Vectorworks is breaking every curved line into hundreds or thousands of arcs. All I really need is the various layouts to scale with general snap points remaining. I'm more often than not redrawing 90% of the design. I do occasionally pull vectors directly from the imported file to cut on our CNC machine. Maybe this is more of an AutoCAD question? Maybe it's a workflow question. Maybe I need to learn more of AutoCAD as well? Regardless it would be really nice to just import this stuff into Vectorworks and run with it rather than jump through a handful of hoops. Thanks Quote Link to comment
rDesign Posted September 5, 2024 Share Posted September 5, 2024 (edited) The first thing to check — is that when you import the DWG into your .VWX shuttle file, you should enable the option to ‘Center on Import’. If you have that many objects far away from the internal & user origin (more than 3km) that can possibly slow things down. Not saying that is what the issue is, but it’s always good to check. You should also run the Purge command to get rid of coincident duplicate objects. Edited September 5, 2024 by rDesign 1 Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 Breaking the dwg up into the pieces you need instead of everything in one file might help. You can then assemble it all into Vectorworks with optimal Design layers and such. Purge inside AutoCAD can sometimes help. Quote Link to comment
Phillip Tripp Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 Sharing a tip about Autocad vs VW purging: We used to pre clean DWGs in autocad with purge, (-PU,all), & audit, but we stopped doing that step after running several comparative tests with VW's own purge feature within the advanced import settings. We found VW accomplished essentially the same level of cleaning which saved us the pre clean time and effort. The comparison looked at empty layer reduction and elimination of known audit errors that Autocad would catch with the files we tested. After VW import, then immediately export back out to DWG, autocad usually reports zero errors in audits nor finds additional items to purge, which gave us more confidence in VW's built in purge feature during import. One exception is files that seem to include mystery objects or layers that cannot be purged, try using Autocad's WBlock command to select the objects you only care about and Autocad will create a really clean new DWG file of just those objects. That's a tip straight from Autocad's tech support. Another exception for problem DWG files is Autocad's recover file feature that VW can't duplicate. 2 Quote Link to comment
Pat Stanford Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 Or even just Group each of the 2D Views. In my experience the biggest slowdown is not the geometry, but rather having to draw the selection handles for many objects. If you 180K objects ended up in 100 groups it may (will) be substantially faster to work with. 1 Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee jcogdell Posted September 6, 2024 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted September 6, 2024 you can also try using a shuttle file and exploding the DWG after import into it. Group select everything and run the ungroup command a couple of times this will sever the link between the imported DWG geometry and the geometry on the design layer, you can now go ahead and delete the contents of your active files resources. This should massively improve performance, I've used this on older dwg floor plans that imported 65000+ objects into the file resources and gone from an unuseable file to having normal performance 1 Quote Link to comment
Elite Exhibits Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 5 hours ago, jcogdell said: try using a shuttle file and exploding the DWG @jcogdell Please and thank you - elaborate on this fr the uninitiated ... Or point to the section in VW Help that gives a step by step descrition ...s'il vous plait Peter Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted September 6, 2024 Share Posted September 6, 2024 13 hours ago, Phillip Tripp said: Sharing a tip about Autocad vs VW purging: We used to pre clean DWGs in autocad with purge, (-PU,all), & audit, but we stopped doing that step after running several comparative tests with VW's own purge feature within the advanced import settings. We found VW accomplished essentially the same level of cleaning which saved us the pre clean time and effort. The comparison looked at empty layer reduction and elimination of known audit errors that Autocad would catch with the files we tested. After VW import, then immediately export back out to DWG, autocad usually reports zero errors in audits nor finds additional items to purge, which gave us more confidence in VW's built in purge feature during import. We did a bunch of testing on that too and frequently found Vectorworks would hang up or crash when importing AutoCAD files that had certain kinds of purgable information in them. I remember certain unused 3D block definitions with unused fonts were particularly problematic. Purging in AutoCAD first made it possible to import something into Vectorworks that would otherwise crash. Quote Link to comment
Vectorworks, Inc Employee jcogdell Posted September 6, 2024 Vectorworks, Inc Employee Share Posted September 6, 2024 @Elite Exhibits A shuttle file is just an empty vectorworks file that you use to experiment with the DWG import settings and to work the imported DWG geometry over before using it in a project file. This way you avoid potentially introducing huge numbers of objects into your active design files resources and can do things like exploding the DWG without risk to your project. An added benefet is you dont need to directly import the dwg into your design file, instead you can reference the shuttle file. The issue with dwgs creating objects in the vectorwks file resources is ver common and largely depends on 2 factors how the dwg was drawn the import dwg settings as long as you are only interested in the DWG geometry you don't need the symbols it creates in the file resource exploding the file works but you can't delete the objects in the file resources until you have severed the link between them and the geometry on the design layer. In the example I was talking about in my last post with the 65000+ objects in the file resources, the imported dwg had created a unique symbol for every single line, curve etc... in the 2D floor plan dwg, and at that time there was no way to filter the incoming dwg layers to only import what was needed for the clients project. So exploding the dwg was the only real option to be able to use the file. Now (as of version 2024) the import dwg command enables you to choose which dwg layers will be imported, so you can use a shuttle file to identify which dwg layers you need and then only import those layers into your primary file or create a new shuttle file with only those layers and reference it into you design. Either route works and will help maintain the performance of your primary design file 1 Quote Link to comment
Phillip Tripp Posted September 10, 2024 Share Posted September 10, 2024 On 9/6/2024 at 10:22 AM, Jeff Prince said: We did a bunch of testing on that too and frequently found Vectorworks would hang up or crash when importing AutoCAD files that had certain kinds of purgable information in them. I remember certain unused 3D block definitions with unused fonts were particularly problematic. Purging in AutoCAD first made it possible to import something into Vectorworks that would otherwise crash. Jeff, curious if the 3D Block definitions were related to architectural models or Civil 3D files. We primarily tested civil 3D files which routinely trigger audit errors within basic Autocad in our office. VW seemed to purge the same problematic audit errors fine. But to your point, when there are obvious fails within VW, we go back to Autocad to do the usual purge, audit, wblock, recover tricks. I've been running VW23 for a couple years direct importing DWG of survey/utility/3D architectural models and converting to VW files for referencing without VW crashing, but I know I could be a lucky one. Quote Link to comment
Jeff Prince Posted September 10, 2024 Share Posted September 10, 2024 2 hours ago, Phillip Tripp said: Jeff, curious if the 3D Block definitions were related to architectural models or Civil 3D files. We primarily tested civil 3D files which routinely trigger audit errors within basic Autocad in our office. VW seemed to purge the same problematic audit errors fine. But to your point, when there are obvious fails within VW, we go back to Autocad to do the usual purge, audit, wblock, recover tricks. I've been running VW23 for a couple years direct importing DWG of survey/utility/3D architectural models and converting to VW files for referencing without VW crashing, but I know I could be a lucky one. I see problems with civil info more frequently (Civil 3D and various AutoCAD friendly survey packages) and the occasional architectural model. Civil 3D in particular has a lot of funky objects that cause problems. Heck, they sometimes cause problems inside regular AutoCAD too 🙂 Quote Link to comment
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