Author Topic: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?  (Read 3679 times)

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MSTG007

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What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« on: August 22, 2016, 02:16:56 PM »
This might sound alittle weird. We are using 2016, and all of a sudden; opening drawings are taking forever; where they were really quick before. ie saving my DWT to my C drive and then opening it takes about 22 seconds. before it was pretty much instantaneous. It seems like it is waiting for about 20 of those seconds and then I can see the load progress bar at the bottom right of the screen load it quickly.

I have AutoCAD in Stock mode and still getting the same results.

I can open the file in another application and it opens it up immediately...
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lamarn

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2016, 03:24:07 PM »
We had some troubles with Autocad in regards to network latency. Quit a lot of operations were quicker offline without network and with a borrowed licence. Maybe it's worth it to test it that way...
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Matt__W

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2016, 04:25:43 PM »
A few users here reported the same thing happening recently (as recent as today, actually) with some Civil 3D drawings.
It's possible that some of this slowness today is related to the issues with cloud services.

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MSTG007

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2016, 04:30:10 PM »
ok. I will by that. That does make the most sense. The guys who do have an account "say its way slow"...
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rkmcswain

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2016, 08:41:33 PM »
I've been testing this intently recently.

My test subject = Civil 3D 2014, on a stock OOTB profile, with NO network connections, including no Wifi.

My latest test involved starting a new empty (no template) drawing, and immediately saving it.
Sometimes the file is about 1MB, other times, it's about 350k. (So explain that...)
Sometimes I can close the 350k file and open it back up and save again, and it grows to the 1MB size.

The most frustrating thing is I'm trying to do this as scientifically as possible, by closely monitoring the environment, but I'm getting varied results.
It makes no sense.

I've carefully examined the 1MB drawing vs the 350k drawing - for non-graphical data and there is nothing obvious. There is some "Architectural Desktop" data embedded in the larger file, but certainly not 700k worth.

Will update if/when I find something else.

MSTG007

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2016, 08:59:38 PM »
I can say this... Sometimes I notice that we xref architectural floor plans in our site xref. And sometimes those site xrefs get way bigger than they should... All I can say is always backup your dwgs before you work on them...

Other than that acad has acted normally once we signed out of 360.
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MSTG007

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #6 on: August 23, 2016, 07:49:10 AM »
Still on this topic alittle. When I open a file from our network, it loads the following:

Code: [Select]
Opening an AutoCAD 2013 format file.
Regenerating model.
AutoCAD menu utilities loaded.
AutoCAD menu utilities loaded.; error: quit / exit abort
 nil
Command:
Autodesk DWG.  This file is a TrustedDWG last saved by an Autodesk application or Autodesk licensed application.
Command:
Command:

Just curious the ;error: quit / exit abort might mean? It does hang up on that for a few seconds...
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rkmcswain

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2016, 08:28:19 AM »
Remove all startup files such as acad.lsp, acaddoc.lsp, any <menuname>.mnl files, etc.
Does that error go away?
Add each startup file back in one at a time, until the error appears (if it's in Acad.lsp, it will only appear at application startup, not drawing startup, presuming ACADLSPASDOC=0) - so shut down AutoCAD and restart each time.

Once you find the file causing the error, check it out and/or post it here for assistance.


MSTG007

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #8 on: August 23, 2016, 09:40:57 AM »
Nailed it... Thanks a bunch for the error part.
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Mark

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #9 on: August 23, 2016, 10:50:28 AM »
I've been testing this intently recently.

My test subject = Civil 3D 2014, on a stock OOTB profile, with NO network connections, including no Wifi.

My latest test involved starting a new empty (no template) drawing, and immediately saving it.
Sometimes the file is about 1MB, other times, it's about 350k. (So explain that...)
Sometimes I can close the 350k file and open it back up and save again, and it grows to the 1MB size.

The most frustrating thing is I'm trying to do this as scientifically as possible, by closely monitoring the environment, but I'm getting varied results.
It makes no sense.

I've carefully examined the 1MB drawing vs the 350k drawing - for non-graphical data and there is nothing obvious. There is some "Architectural Desktop" data embedded in the larger file, but certainly not 700k worth.

Will update if/when I find something else.
Would regapps affect the file size? Sometimes when I purge files there are over 4000 regapps removed.
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rkmcswain

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #10 on: August 23, 2016, 11:04:47 AM »
@Mark, I'm aware of regapps, DGN linetype bloat, scale list entries, etc.  - that is why I'm starting with a new (no template) drawing. So, no there is none of the (what you might call) normal Autodesk bloat in the 1MB files. Whatever it is, is pretty stealthy and even avoids being exported to DXF.

The main point of my exercise was to establish a baseline file size, and file open times for a bare bones empty drawing on a local SSD drive.
Then as components are added (move file to network, add some known xrefs, etc) - we could see how each step affects file size and open times.

MSTG007

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #11 on: August 23, 2016, 11:24:59 AM »
I kinda was just testing this out on my end alittle. I had a drawing from our base template and had a rectangle polyline in it. I saved it and the file size was 1,251KB, I then WBLOCKED it out and its down to 65KB. The funny thing is, when I opened the saved template file, the time was roughly 20 seconds. the other once was 6 seconds. I repeated it several times, and on different machines; and still got the same times.
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rkmcswain

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #12 on: August 23, 2016, 11:36:13 AM »
Sounds like your template has a lot of data in it. Is this in plain vanilla AutoCAD or Civil 3D?

MSTG007

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #13 on: August 23, 2016, 11:40:26 AM »
its Civil3D
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rkmcswain

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Re: What is Autocad doing when opening a dwg?
« Reply #14 on: August 23, 2016, 11:43:52 AM »
That is expected then IMO.
A typical C3D template drawing will contain ±1MB of non-graphical data.
The stock one that comes with C3D (_AutoCAD Civil 3D (Imperial) NCS.dwt) is ±800kb.