Generic Solid or Solid Addition?

[Haydenovative]

Heya Gang,

 

I work in event design and i have a question for the think tank. If i have created a rather complex object with fillets, solid additions and subtractions, maybe some sweeps etc. and I then convert that into a symbol. Am I better off leaving it as a solid addition, or once I'm happy with it should I convert that to a generic solid? I'm thinking about the drag it has on working with the drawing, is there a simple better option her for performance?

[EAlexander]

I always convert to generic solid once we are happy with the object and think we are mostly done modifying it. That said, I ALWAYS keep a parametric copy of everything in a separate file. 

[Haydenovative]

@EAlexander, do you find that there is an increase in the performance of the drawing once you've converted it? Is that the reason you choose to convert?

[EAlexander]

To me it's about file size on really large scenes. You can really cut down the weight of the file this way. Most of my show files are 300MB+

 

Not sure if performance gains - I get just fine performance overall. Should mention I still run 2019 and stay a full year behind development. 

[JustinVH]

In content development world we have learned that simple objects like sweeps and extrudes should stay as sweeps and extrudes as converting to generic solids can sometimes increase the size of the object and symbol.  Once we start performing operations like subtractions, additions, and commands from the 3D modeling tool set we convert to generic solids to strip the object of geometry history and reduce the file size.  That being said, we always keep a backup copy of our files in non generic solids just in case a file corruption happens in the future and we need to examine the original symbol's creation methods.