Topic: Drawings containing large Longsections (profiles) taking forever to edit.

[spittle]

Sometimes we need to produce very long long sections (profiles). Our master profile is split into many smaller profiles to display across sometimes 20 or so drawing tabs.

switching between tabs, or adjusting the profile, regens etc take forever. click, wait, click, wait etc... Issuing drawings is not a quick process as it should be.

My colleague produced these and is using a core 2 duo (2.4GHz) machine with 4GB RAM, 64bit windows 7, New Geforce 275 graphics card. I'm using XP64, 2xQuad2.66GHz Xeons, 8GB RAM, Quadro FX 3800 graphics card.

These are loaded accross a network, however my colleague has tried saving on his C drive with no performance gains. The drawing I'm currently working on contains five XREFs, between 4 and 6 MB each. Drawing size is 3.06MB.

Can anyone offer some advice?

[spittle]

forgot to say, surface is data linked in to problem drawing.

If anyone has a whole workflow suggestion for next time then that would be great i.e. stick you surface here, your alignments here etc.

[Willie]

I would suggest you look into Data Shortcuts to speed up your drawing.

The idea is to have some of your Civil 3D objects in different drawings.  I have made  the mistake once to have all my surfaces, cross-sections, profile etc. in one drawing with quite a few tabs.  It was a stupid mistake.  It took 15 to 20 seconds to switch between tabs.  My next project that would require a lot of cross-sections, profiles etc. I am going to make use of data shortcuts.

Edit:  Have a look in the Civil 3D tutorials for a Data Shortcut work flow.  It only takes a couple of minutes to do the tutorials

[spittle]

I know how to use data shortcuts and so does my colleague however this project only contains one alignment, and one surface, just a very long one! Each tab contains a profile of just a small portion of the alignment, tab one is chainages 1-500m, tab two 500-1000m etc. the pipeline is about 10km long.

I also think this kind of job needs to be kept as one alignment.

Currently the surface is on its own in another drawing, it is then datalinked into the problem drawing. All profiles (and the alignment I beleive - not got time to check at this minute) is contained within the problem drawing.

Thanks for the reply though.

[mjfarrell]

Are you creating a corridor along this long alignment?

If the answer is yes...that might be the issue itself...and could possibly point to a hardware issue

or, it might lend itself to breaking that corridor down into multiple smaller regions, and only have turned on smaller portions as you work on the design; only turning it all back on near the final stages...


(might I see the data? )

[jdensmer]

I'm always cautious of drawings with 20 layout tabs - you might try limiting each .dwg to 4-5 tabs and see if performance improves.

[spittle]

So put the alignment in the drawing with the surface, datalink into seaparate drawings with 5 or so tabs each.

Produce profiles separately - I'll try that.

[spittle]

Just notices a few more posts.

There's no corridoor. simply an alignment, 28 profile views each in a separate tab.

There is a profile indicating ground level linked with the surface, and a manual profile indicating the invert level of the proposed pipe.

We'd like to use a pipe network instead, however this is already unmanageable so a pipe network I'm sure would bring it to it's knees.

Regarding Spec: Is this due to cores only being 2.4 or 2.66GHz?

[mjfarrell]

could be more of  RAM, and free space on your hard disk...


I think what Jason was saying there, is to create your layouts one each to a new drawing...
go ahead with the data reference for your alignment, and surface...
only when you run the plan production tools select the option of Each Layout is a New Drawing....NOTE: when executed this way it will appear as if the command failed; remember, to open and save the new sheets using sheet set manager to complete the process

[Wedding]

Spittle,

Working with long alignments like you have was a bit of an issue with C3D 2010 and prior. Any chance you can move to C3D 2011? I see you have a 64-bit machine, so I really think you'd see some major improvements with 2011 and your box.

Hope this helps,
JW

[spittle]

2011 will come shortly. My colleague is using it - I would imagine the first thing he did was to try those drawings - he's away on holiday at the moment so can't ask him but I know he said he did not see any improvements in Civil 3D

Regarding splitting into separate drawings. It would not be the right solution if creating a manual profile on the proile views as the previous sheet can often effect the next one and profiles can't be used as data shortcuts. I guess a pipe network could work as this can be used as a data shortcut. I don't think this facility is really designed for cross country pipe routes and who knows how it will perform.

Wedding - so are you saying 2011 is going to fully utilise all of my cores? Rather than only if I use the mental ray rendering engine.

Spawn - I don't think it's RAM, maybe but the rest of my PC does not appear to slow down. Regarding hard disks, am I right in thinking that this determines the read/write speed of the software and it's components? and maybe the culprit rather than read/write of data created by the user?

When I speced this PC, I suggested we go for a 15,000rpm HDD, but this suggestion was never taken, guess we'll never know now!

[Jeff_M]

Regarding splitting into separate drawings. It would not be the right solution if creating a manual profile on the proile views as the previous sheet can often effect the next one and profiles can't be used as data shortcuts.

Why can't you use data shortcuts with profiles? I use them quite often.....

[mjfarrell]

and why are you creating any profiles, in the referenced profiles created for each sheet when generated with the Plan Production Tools?  That stuff should all come from your design, including the pipe network.

when you say 'overland' do you mean a course from point A to B...or do you mean elevated above ground?

IF A to B it works quite well....

[Wedding]

Wedding - so are you saying 2011 is going to fully utilise all of my cores? Rather than only if I use the mental ray rendering engine.

No, the biggest change would be the ability to use all the RAM and have to push less data to the HD as you're working through the processing of the long section. 64-bit and 8GB does wonders for reducing caching and in general improving life in C3D.

[reno]

Drawing 0ne -> surface
Drawing Two -> Alignment and Profiles with surface Drefed in. Use this to create the plan and profile sheets using the Plan Production tools. Datareference the alignment, profile, and surface into PnP sheets.
Drawing Three -> PnP sheets 1, 2, 3 and 4. Detach Xref from Drawing Two
Drawing Four -> PnP sheets 5, 6, 7 and 8. Detach Xref from Drawing Two
Drawing Five -> Repeat as necessary.