Author Topic: A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.  (Read 15620 times)

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MP

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« on: June 27, 2004, 11:36:50 AM »
Not a standard per se but practical advice. Thoughts? :)
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Dent Cermak

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #1 on: June 27, 2004, 12:15:51 PM »
I have had people look me in the eye and tell me purging the drawing jas no real effect on the drawing. Then they ask me why my drawings load faster, plot faster and are smaller than theirs. You can't teach a rock to fly without a slingshot.
It should be common practice to purge ALL drawings before sending them out. It should be a habit that the last step to complete a drawing is to purge it.

Slim©

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #2 on: June 27, 2004, 12:21:01 PM »
What would you want "layers, linetypes, blocks, etc." sitting aroung in your drawing?
Put 'em to work or get rid of 'em.   :D  :)
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MP

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #3 on: June 27, 2004, 01:31:33 PM »
Quote from: Dent Cermak
You can't teach a rock to fly without a slingshot.

lol, that's my favorite quote so far today. :)
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Mark

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #4 on: June 27, 2004, 03:06:54 PM »
I don't purge my dwg's. But here's why. When I start a new dwg I use a template that has all my layers and all the layers defined by my co-departments standard. I often hand off my dwg's to them for design work. When they get my dwg's all their layers are all ready setup for them. Make sense?
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Slim©

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #5 on: June 27, 2004, 03:09:20 PM »
Makes good sense, however once you have the majority of your work done, and are going to send it to the client, sub-consultants and primarys, you should purge.
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Mark

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #6 on: June 27, 2004, 03:22:17 PM »
Agreed, but most of our dwg's never leave our office.
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Slim©

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #7 on: June 27, 2004, 03:24:11 PM »
There we go another exception, just goes to show we all have different needs. :)
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MP

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #8 on: June 27, 2004, 03:26:41 PM »
Quote from: Mark Thomas
I don't purge my dwg's. But here's why. When I start a new dwg I use a template that has all my layers and all the layers defined by my co-departments standard. I often hand off my dwg's to them for design work. When they get my dwg's all their layers are all ready setup for them. Make sense?

With your abilities in lisp you could quickly roll-your own layer maker, or insert a blank drawing that has nothing but the layers you want defined; burp => instant layers, but no purging? Eeek! :)
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Slim©

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #9 on: June 27, 2004, 03:28:39 PM »
Quote from: MP
With your abilities in lisp you could quickly roll-your own layer maker, or insert a blank drawing that has nothing but the layers you want defined; burp => instant layers, but no purging? Eeek! :)


Whoa, novel thought!!!!!   :D  :D
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Mark

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #10 on: June 27, 2004, 03:33:44 PM »
Quote from: MP
With your abilities in lisp you could quickly roll-your own layer maker, or insert a blank drawing that has nothing but the layers you want defined; burp => instant layers, but no purging? Eeek! :)

Sad truth is I have one, that was hard to say I have a set of functions that read and write layer names stored in the registry. Maybe Monday I'll implement that and see how it goes. thanks.
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CADaver

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2004, 03:38:21 PM »
We, typically, don't purge until the drawings are ready for transfer to the customer.  Until that time there maybe custom enetities we wish to retrieve.

Keith™

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2004, 03:53:05 PM »
Well, I purge my drawings EVERY time I save them ...

Before I am told that this is neither efficient use of my time, nor productive, let me explain ....

I have "housekeeping" routines that run independently of each other and independent of user interaction

This is how I have it setup ...

Reactor for purging drawing, I'll explain the "EndSave" thing in a minute....

Code: [Select]

Private Sub AcadDocument_EndSave(ByVal FileName As String)
 SendCommand "ENDIT" & vbCr
End Sub


This is the purging proggie .....
Code: [Select]

(defun c:ENDIT (/ NAME)
  (setq CMD (getvar "CMDECHO")
  (setvar "CMDECHO" 0)
  (setq NAME (getvar "DWGNAME"))
  (IF (/= (GETVAR "DWGPREFIX")(SUBSTR NAME 1 (STRLEN (GETVAR "DWGPREFIX"))))
      (SETQ NAME (STRCAT (GETVAR "DWGPREFIX")NAME))
  )
  (setvar "EXPERT" 4)
  (command ".WBLOCK" NAME "*")
  (setvar "EXPERT" 0)
  (setvar "CMDECHO" CMD)
  (princ)
)


This line is located in my Acaddoc.lsp
Code: [Select]

(command "-insert" "*mytemplate" "0,0" 1 0)


Now while it is not elegant, it is efficient, behind the scenes, and no user interaction required

Let me explain the EndSave thing above in case you have not figured it out...

If you use the wblock command it does not reset the dbmod variable and thus will prompt you to save the drawing once again when you close it. (effectively losing any purging value), plus you will have a bak in the event you need to "undo" your save.

So now whenever I "save" a drawing (regardless of how it was initiated) the reactor will call the endit routine after it has been initially saved,  wblock my entire drawing to the original drawing name, effectively purging it.

When I open a new drawing, the line in my acaddoc.lsp will automatically insert the default template (containing all of my layers, linetypes, textstyle, dimstyles, etc...) and since it is inserted as an exploded block, it does not get written to the drawing header.

I only audit drawings once or twice during their lifespan...but then again it is regularly only a few weeks long.... then it is archive city....
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MP

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2004, 01:38:04 AM »
Hi Keith - Do you check for excessive appid (Registered Applications) counts and purge them? If not, it's probably only a matter of time before you start, particularly if you use any add-ons or third party applications. Once the count grows beyond 32767 +/- AutoCAD will begin to chuck a wobbly; catching it before it grows to such cancerous proportions is advised.

I've also found some dictionary entries of third party applications can grow astronomically -- we've had munster files with nominal content approaching 100 MB - when put on the examination table they were found to have dictionary entries in excess of 5.5 million (I'm not kidding). When the cancerous dictionary entries were excised they were sprightly 1 MB dwgs.

Sadly these are true stories; carry a big stick, make noise.
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Keith™

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A. I will periodically purge and audit my drawings.
« Reply #14 on: June 29, 2004, 08:12:37 AM »
I have had the occasion to need to remove many unused appids from a drawing, and yes I know about the 32k mark for appids. I am not completely positive, but by wblocking the entire drawing, I think unused appids are purged. Dictionaries I think are purged as well
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