Flattening Print / Simplify Viewports / Cannot Cancel Print

[Neil's in...]

Hey all,

I have a set of plans on an A1 sheet which has been causing me endless problems, it contains 9 viewports which are all unshaded.

Sending to print does not cause vectorworks to crash however it makes it totally unresponsive at the progress bar "sending to print" I have repeatedly had to kill vectorworks after hanging there for ~40 minutes doing nothing.

A work around has been to export it to PDF however the file works out at 34MBs for a b&w vector sheet. I find this quite unacceptable as does my plotter. I notice on loading the pdf it renders all the components to all the walls behind the facing elevations (surely unnecessary?!?!)

Aside from crashing constantly and being unable to plot... is there a work around this I would ideally like to be able to get these drawings out to planning today!

Many thanks

Edited October 14, 2013 by Neil's in...

[PVA - Admin]

Does this only happen on that particular drawing or will it occur in any file with a few viewports in that rendering mode?

If you change the option under File > Print for "Update visible out of date viewports" does it affect the print speed? (regardless of whether they are out of date or not)

What DPI are your sheet layers set to?

[Neil's in...]

Hi Jim,

Everything is default... I have since been reading up on optimizing performance and reduced the 3D res settings and lowered the 100 undos back to 25.

You'll have to be a little patient with me, I have 15 years experience of AutoCAD and 2 weeks experience of VW, however it's rather intuitive!

I found purging reduced the file size by about 50MBs however it's still 120MBs for a single 3 storey house which is only preliminary without detailing. Is that normal?

[PVA - Admin]

Thats a bit large, but it isnt always possible to tell from filesize.

Go ahead and send the following:

http://kbase.vectorworks.net/questions/627/DirectX+Diagnostics+and+System+Profiler

to tech@vectorworks.net with the subject "ATTN Jim" and I can take a closer look. I want to take a look at the file too, but since its most likely too large to email directly, i'll reply back with a link you can use to upload it.

Edited October 14, 2013 by JimW

[Neil's in...]

Hi Jim, I did upload as requested, what happens next?

Many thanks

[PVA - Admin]

Ill see if I can replicate the issue here, if I cant, then we will look more closely into your specific machine to see if the problem lies there.

If I can replicate the problem, then we can see if its some setting within the file or if it would be something that requires a patch. Most likely it will either be document or machine-specific.

[Neil's in...]

Jim I've uploaded the file however, I did manage to have more luck later in the day after reducing 3D settings, purging and lowering the UNDOs. However, I'd love to know why the file is so bulky

[PVA - Admin]

It looks like the size issue the file is having is because under File > Document Settings > Document Preferences > Display, the option for "Save Viewport Cache" is checked. This is saving the renders of each of the viewports.

This setting will save you time not having to re-render after opening and closing the document, but will increase file size.

However, it seems like the sluggishness in the file is coming from the Unshaded Polygon viewports. When I either delete them or render them in something else, such as Hidden Line, the speed improves dramatically.

Going to do some more testing and submit the file if it turns out the Unshaded Polygon rendering has an issue.

[Neil Barman]

Gentlemen, I'm very curious to know the outcome of this situation. I'm not having similar issues myself (touch wood) but I am getting into 3D & rendering work with VW (after many years of being required to use it in 2D only) and I suspect your findings would be quite informative.

Thanks,

-Neil

[PVA - Admin]

At the moment it seems file specific, but there were no conclusions so far. Other files of similar complexity do not display the same behavior.

[Amelia S]

Hey yall,

I'm curious about this statement Neil made: "I notice on loading the pdf it renders all the components to all the walls behind the facing elevations (surely unnecessary?!?!)" mainly because I have the same problem, especially in hidden line plan exports. It is a simple roof plan with but it exports all the hidden information. I can't find a setting to stop this.

Amelia

VW 2013