DWG Import drawing SLOW

[Matt Hagen]

Im working on a DWG imported file (previously exported from Archicad) and when I click to reassign a line or text to a class, it takes at least a minute to refresh. Makes for VERY slow drawing. Any ideas please?

I should mention the file is just under 400M

 

MATT HAGEN

Vectorworks 2020 SP 3.1

Windows 10 Pro

Dell Precision Tower 36020, Intel i7, 32G RAM

Edited June 24, 2020 by Matt Hagen

[Matt Hagen]

Ive now split the file in to 3 separate files and tried to purge. The purge says it runs out of memory and saves an incomplete file. Aghh!

When I say slow. I mean click to reassign an class to an object, wait for at least 2 min before I can do anything else. SO FRUSTRATING

[Benson Shaw]

how far from vwx drawing origin is the dwg geometry? dwgs geometry often imports in a galaxy far far away. or has a few errant object way out ther. vwx gets slow trying to deal with it. 

 

try this layer by layer...

select all

fit to objects. might find something in one screen corner (eg most objects) and something else in opposite corner (eg a bit of text or a viewport or other) or some arc with infinite radius (should be a straight line), or ??..

 

if thats the case consider  moving any outlier to the main mass, or delete them. and then move everything close to drawing origin - same move vector in every layer. 

 

or adjust vwx user origin close to the geometry. many users do not like this origin adjust. 

 

post back if this is not issue 

-B

Edited June 24, 2020 by Benson Shaw
thinking ahead

[Matt Hagen]

Thanks for the suggestion Benson.

I tried that on a few Design layers but didn’t make any difference. Any other suggestions or do I need to do it to all design layers to see the result?

[Benson Shaw]

probably all layers individually , or set layer and class status to ShowSnapModify then select all and fit to objects. but main point is how far things are from internal origin. can you verify that everything is within a half mile or so of the origin? or is the bulk of geometry way out there?or a stray or two?  if everything close to origin, then slowness is some other issue. 

 

another common culprit is many vertex heavy objects. could be hundreds of screws, or chairs made of detailed meshes, or plants, ...

 

another is several or many pdf or bitmaps. these should be reduced in pixel/file size, or referenced in as design layer viewports.

 

another is system hardware. try setting the vwx pref for graphics display to “best compatibility“. 

 

image textures can be problem if source image is too big in pixels. 

 

sorry. maybe you could describe contents of the vwx file? anything other than the import? 

-B

Edited June 25, 2020 by Benson Shaw

[Matt Hagen]

objects arent too far from internal origin.

Ive uploaded the file in the hope it will help...

Thank you

_S1-21_27_St_Lukes.vwx

[Nina Ivanova]

Thank you for sharing the document, Matt!

 

I can confirm the delay when working with the document. From what I see there, you have either imported the DWG in an already existing Vectorworks document, or have updated it later adding more staff. Or you might have imported multiple DWG files - probably 267 according to the number of Design layers?  

The rest of the things, which I found:

- The document contains nearly 4 735 000 objects, screen plane;

 

- Created symbols are 97623; There are also lots of groups;

- Imported hatches are actually groups with lines - Vectorworks imports hatches as hatches, does not decompose them - so probably this is how the DWG file has been exported by ArchiCAD;

 

 

 

- Seems that dimensions are also presented as groups of lines and text - by default we import dimensions as dimensions, except if the linear scale parameter is different than 1.0 or you have explicitly chosen to import them as groups; 

- There are 350-400 classes and 71 sheet layers;

 

I will create a performance issue and will attach this document there so that our engineers could look at it and work on improvements.

 

Thank you,

Nina

[Matt Hagen]

Thanks Nina. 

That seems like a pretty accurate assessment.

The Vectorworks file was new when i imported the DWG and I late added the Floor Plans. 

For future reference, is there a better way I should have gone about it?

Thanks again for your help