Speed

[MisterJingles]

Hi guys

 

I am pulling my hair out with the slow speed at which my PC opens drawings. One in particular which I work on every day.

Its large, almost 19mb with 5 layouts each with 2 viewports.

What can I do to speed things up? The drawing takes around 3 or 4 minutes to open and switching between layouts takes over a minute each time.

 

Im using Autocad 2007 LT (upgrading to 2010 LT in a few days)

Machine is an Intel Pentium4, 3.2ghz, 2Gig RAM.

 

Whats the best way to speed up performance?

 

Many thanks

Rob

[Dave^]

have you done a purge and an audit?

 

what format are you saving the .dwg as? 2004/2007/etc?

[MisterJingles]

Hi Dave

 

Im saving as a 2000/2000lt drawing.

And yes Ive purged the drawing and notice no change.

 

Regards

[Dave^]

do you NEED to save it as in 2000?

 

try saving in 2007 format, that MAY reduce the size, once saved, try another purge and audit.....

[MisterJingles]

Ok Ive saved it as a 2007 drawing and the size is down to 9.8mb, remarkable!

But its done nothing for the speed at which the drawing operates.

 

What is an audit?

 

If someone using an earlier version of Autocad needs to open this drawing, could they?

 

Regards

[Dave^]

an audit will find (and fix) any errors within the drawing.....

 

i'm not sure it's available in LT, just type AUDIT and it'll either work or it wont....

 

only acad versions 2007 or newer will be able to open the file, if anyone still uses an older version, you will have to save it in that version.....

 

maybe just a 'file/save as' if you need to send the file out.....

[deres]

Hi, mr Jingles...19mb is a biiiig file.

1. Try to group as many relative elements into blocks.

2. Try to use x-refs, they are made for this particular reason, to down-size & speed up large files.

[MisterJingles]

DAVE - Ok I understand everything you said, thanks. If needed in an earlier version Ill save it as 2000.

A question on that though, I saved as 2007 and it reduces the drawing size as I said, but only while the drawing is open. When I close it, and check properties of the .dwg its around 18 megs now. While the BAK is still 9mbs. What am I missing?

Regardless of this, after doing the AUDIT (which is available on LT) the drawing is much faster. Now taking 15 seconds to open and 5 seconds to switch between layouts. Heavenly!!

 

DERES - This is a huge layout drawing to which I am adding my electrical LV layout so I can only do so much with regards to using blocks.

Also, a large portion of this drawing is an xref already

[Dave^]

it'll probably still say it's 18mb til you've restarted your pc and everything is sync'd up and your memory has cleared itself etc.....

 

did the audit pick up many errors?

[MisterJingles]

I did restart but still nothing. Ill leave it for now and see if it changes like you say.

The audit did pick up a number of errors.

 

Also, I get an error upon start up of the drawing that it cannot find a particular font, how can I find out what object uses that font so I can change it?

All I have is the font name.

[MisterJingles]

Ok in TOOLS I changed the option to SAVE AS a 2007 drawing there automatically and now whether open or closed it shows as a 9mb 2007 drawing.

[stevsmith]

Does this just happen with just autocad?

 

How long does it take to open a pdf file of roughly the same size?

[MisterJingles]

Yes just Autocad Steve.

 

I have not tried opening a similar sized PDF.

But as stated, it seems the problem is solved.

[MisterJingles]

Ok ignore my question regarding the font.

Its solved