rsa Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 I'm a relative novice at VW and trying to find ways to make me drawings smaller and more manageable. I know in general that symbols can help keep the drawing size down, but I'm not clear how it works exactly. In particular I need to do detailed plans with lots of floor tiles. The hatch tool is too complicated for me to figure out to make hex tiles etc. with it. so I need to end up with a field of 1000s of hexes (and other types) would it help to make a 1 hex symbol and repeat it or to make a field of hexes into a symbol and mask out areas as needed? or are neither helpful? Same question for shingles/roof tiles etc. Thanks Rob Quote Link to comment
jan15 Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 It takes fewer bytes to store the insertion point and attributes of a symbol insertion than to store the endpoints and attributes of the lines that make up the symbol definition. Even if the symbol consists of only one line, as long as there are many instances of that one line you'll save a little file space by using a symbol instead of just copying the line. For convenience as well as smaller file size, you might consider nested symbols -- make a symbol that consists of one tile, and then make another symbol that consists of an array of insertions of the first symbol. Anything that will be repeated several times in the drawing is fair game for symbols. Quote Link to comment
Dieter @ DWorks Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 you can also make a hatch and change the insertion point, that will surely reduce your file size! Quote Link to comment
islandmon Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 rsa ... you're on the right track ... honestly ... the majority of my time is spent working within the Resource Browser with symbols... and as jan15 states ... nested symbols are the way to efficiency in all things big and small... as for the Hatch problem... head on over to http://www.vectordepot.com they should still have my old v10 mcd file which includes all manner of hatches including hex tiles. Quote Link to comment
rsa Posted November 20, 2007 Author Share Posted November 20, 2007 Thanks for the info jan15, dworks, and islandmon. It never occurred to me to nest a symbol in a symbol for this reason. It seems like the hatch tool could really save some kb's but it is not very user friendly... Quote Link to comment
Dieter @ DWorks Posted November 20, 2007 Share Posted November 20, 2007 You can use associated hatched like you use them in the resource browser. that will be better for hex tiles. Quote Link to comment
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