Author Topic: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.  (Read 3407 times)

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thejeremynixon

  • Mosquito
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Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« on: January 26, 2023, 04:28:22 PM »
Hello all,
I am not sure if this is the right spot to start this in but here's what I need.

Our Blocks in AutoCAD come from Creo and our engineering team. They are solids and are quite large. We made the overall Specify Tool jump from AutoCAD to CET Designer already and I need a way to purge down the size of the drawings/blocks from 4MB-8MB to <200kb.
I am looking at around 200+ blocks right now and just using the purge options available in AutoCAD 2023 is not enough.

I guess I would be looking for a batch converter style lisp routine to get me started.

Has anyone here worked on something like this to go in and remove items, shrink the size, save and move onto the next one?

My company designs, manufactures and sells Dispatch Consoles, Control Room Consoles and more including some NASA and Space Force console projects.

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.
Any other possible advice is also always welcome.

57gmc

  • Bull Frog
  • Posts: 358
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2023, 06:18:08 PM »
I would have posted in the general AutoCAD forum.
Since you have solids, I would import them into AutoCAD modelspace and then use VIEWBASE to create a block of it using the FLATSHOT command. You can then WBLOCK the block to its own file.
On a side note, if you don't have any programming skills, you can write a script using NOTEPAD (*.scr) and run it with the SCRIPT command. Once you have a working script, you can run it on a batch of files with ScriptPro.


thejeremynixon

  • Mosquito
  • Posts: 6
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2023, 09:01:14 PM »
Thanks for your reply! I'll have a look at the FLATSHOT command. I just want to make sure that it doesn't affect the geometry too much once I'm bringing it into the Catalog Creator in CET Designer.

thejeremynixon

  • Mosquito
  • Posts: 6
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2023, 09:12:31 PM »
I would have posted in the general AutoCAD forum.
Since you have solids, I would import them into AutoCAD modelspace and then use VIEWBASE to create a block of it using the FLATSHOT command. You can then WBLOCK the block to its own file.
On a side note, if you don't have any programming skills, you can write a script using NOTEPAD (*.scr) and run it with the SCRIPT command. Once you have a working script, you can run it on a batch of files with ScriptPro.

In my 25 years of use, I've never used either of those and now see that those would have been really helpful on many occasions. Thanks for the education for sure.
What I am looking to do is break down the file size the way that the flatshot command does but I need the block to stay as solids and such.

I was shown a method using a lisp about 6 years ago that does this but I don't even know where to look for that.
I'll keep looking and researching here as well.
Thanks again 57gmc.

thejeremynixon

  • Mosquito
  • Posts: 6
Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2023, 09:35:51 PM »
Hello all,

Our Blocks in AutoCAD are solids and are quite large. We made the overall Specify Tool jump from AutoCAD to CET Designer already and I need a way to purge down the size of the drawings/blocks from 4MB-8MB to <200kb.
I am looking at around 200+ blocks right now and just using the purge options available in AutoCAD 2023 is not enough.

I was shown a method using a lisp about 6 years ago that does this but I don't even know where to look for that.
I'll keep looking and researching here as well.
I guess I would be looking for a batch converter style lisp routine to get me started.

Has anyone here worked on something like this to go in and remove items, shrink the size, save and move onto the next one?

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.
Any other possible advice is also always welcome.
Attached for fun is what we do and what CET Designer can deliver with a quick rendering set up.

57gmc

  • Bull Frog
  • Posts: 358
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2023, 11:32:23 AM »
You didn't mention previously that you wanted the blocks to remain solids. There's not much you can do to reduce the file size of a solid. Besides, 4-8 mb is small for a solid. If you have a model of a chair, that is quite a complex model. Don't expect to see file sizes for a 2D dwg. About the only thing you could do is remove the model's history. But I doubt that the mfr gave you a model with history included.

thejeremynixon

  • Mosquito
  • Posts: 6
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2023, 05:52:39 PM »
Sounds like I just need to go into this one and break down a lot of the visible solids in order to get the overall line count down on the entry to CET Designer for now.

57gmc

  • Bull Frog
  • Posts: 358
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #7 on: January 27, 2023, 07:52:18 PM »
Solids don't work that way. They're not made up of a bunch of lines. They're solid and have a description on how the solid is created. The lines you see in the display are the edges of the solid. If you post a sample file, I can take a look at it. I don't know about your CET application. Why do you need to try to reduce the file size so much? Is there some sort of limitation you're running into?

Note that if you simplify the solid models, you will probably loose detail that will reduce the quality of your renderings. If this is your first venture into 3D solid modeling, it would be better to make sure you have sufficient hardware, than trying to reduce the models. It just takes more horsepower to design in 3D.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2023, 07:59:46 PM by 57gmc »

thejeremynixon

  • Mosquito
  • Posts: 6
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #8 on: January 27, 2023, 08:52:23 PM »
I think I definitely need to locate someone that has had experience in going through this exercise.
CET Designer is a configurator tool with loads of programmable data built in. It uses solids rather than faces and regions like 2020/CAP uses. This however has different levels of graphics that it views so that if you're zoomed out, it doesn't have to calculate all the details, but then it will when you zoom in. It's a blast to use and I've been using it's Catalog Creator to get NonStandard product in, this is where I run into the issue with block size. Within the Creator portion, it gives me a line count which is too high and shows potential errors in the validation windows. It's pretty rad really.

We are the manufacturer of the consoles we design and this is our Specification tool now. All of the big commercial manufacturers are already on CET and have extensions galore.
I was a part of this process with one of my last companies but they are a competitor and I can't call them up and say, hey, what was that lisp routine you were running to take those Solidworks -> DWG - .cmsym files back in 2017?  :2funny: I wish it were that easy.

Is there a group or page that I maybe missed in here that maybe has touched on this?
I haven't seen @LeeMac in years but I imagine there's some knowledge there.  :nerdystraight:

57gmc

  • Bull Frog
  • Posts: 358
Re: Prepping existing DWG blocks for CET Designer implementation.
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2023, 05:47:33 PM »
I can't really advise you on CET, except that maybe they have some forums?
So, do you have access to the SolidWorks files? Inventor has a command that let's you create a shrinkwrap of the model, only a single solid of the complete shape without the internals. SolidWorks probably has a similar command. If you could get that from your designers, it might help reduce file size. I don't know what CET is using to define a line count, but reducing the complexity of your solid model is the only thing I can think of at the moment.