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Slow selections, sometimes


SteveD

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I work on plans that are provided by our client. They are for low voltage electrical designs, illustrating locations of data and telecom drops, along with security cameras, etc. The client's architect or engineer supplies the drawings, I combine them using xrefs and place our symbols for the drops on them. I clean the drawings, audit and purge each one before assembling a final drawing.

Sometimes, when I select an object I have placed, it takes several seconds to allow me to manipulate it. Select, wait several seconds, enter "M", move, place, release, wait several seconds for the curser to free up. I suspect some of the client's drawings are corrupt, but audit and purge do not clear up the problem. Also, when purging these drawings, they don't always purge empty, unused layers etc. I'm using MEP 2013. Most files work just fine, thanks.

My question is this-Is there any other way to "clean up" "corrupt" files rather than or in addition to Audit?

Also, Audit and/or Purge can take many, many minutes or even crash AutoCAD MEP.

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Hi SLW210,

I typed a response, but it went into the ether. Trying again.

My machine is a Dell laptop in a dock. It's got an Intel i7 chip running at 2.4GHz, 16 MB Ram, 64 bit W7 OS. Graphics card is an AMD FirePro M8900 running dual Viewsonic 18" monitors through the dock. I don't believe it's the machine. It's kind of a beast.

I'll try the hotfix and the -Purge. Not sure what WBLOCK would do for me, as the files are massaged for size and consistency, then xrefed. Sometimes they're blocks I have to burst. I'm looking for another way to "clean" the files before I put them together. They're xrefed together, not bound, so if each file is ok, the final file should be, too. Audit and Purge don't seem to be doing it for me. Final drawings that work are generally in the 4mb-5mb range, and these are xrefed into a drawing of ~400kb. The worst offending drawing has individuals ~10mb-15mb with the final being ~4mb. Clearly, there's some extra junk in there somewhere.

Thanks for your help.

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Regapps are often the culprit with performance issues.

 

WBlocking the file will eliminate anything that you do not select. Possible leaving behind items that cannot be purged because they are in use but cannot be selected for whatever reason. I used to do the same thing you are doing and used that procedure quite often.

 

One thing to check for, that is often left off of lists for cleaning drawings, is stray attributes, ones not associated with blocks. Even just one can cause problems.

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Thanks RobDraw. Makes perfect sense. How does one check and eliminate stray attributes?

 

Thanks SLW210. The DGNPURGE works wonders! In 1 drawing, it found ~130,000 "unreferenced" complex linetypes and strokes. Purging again afterward eliminated another several dozens of objects. File size went from 13mb to 341 KB! Amazing. My CAD manager says DGN's are used in MicroStation and don't convert well to AutoCAD, but remain in the drawing when exported for some reason. Why someone would use MicroStation for architecture I don't know, but there it is. Thanks again!

Now, about large boundaries around small blocks...

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It sounds like you've got it sorted. How is the performance?

 

Stray attributes can be found by selecting everything and checking the drop down list in the properties window to see if any are on the list. Changing them to text is not simple without LISP. You can't just change the attribute to text by exploding or with any native commands. Before the I found the LISP, TAG2TEXT (I think that was the original name.), I would copy the text from the attribute editor and paste it into a new MText entity.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The next time you notice slow selection speed, check layer manager. Change the layer filter to something that has less layers in it. I use one called NoXrefs which filters layers with ~*|* for example. If you can get the number of layers reduced you might notice that there will no longer be a 2-second pause when you either select an item or when you move your cursor across an item and it "hangs" right on top of the object.

 

Hope that helps.

 

--T

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