I have been working on a drawing for a few years.  The drawing is a 4-Plex apartment building.  The file size has gradually increased until it is now 25.7 MB.  Performance when working with this file seems to be slow and more crashes occur.  I have some blocks in the drawing, no x-refs, and no images.  The drawing has about 90 Layers and I usually work with 6 to 12 layers at a time.  I have the following questions:

1.  I read on the forum that there is a Purge Tool available.  I cannot find the button for this tool.  How do I invoke this tool?

2.  My strategy is to make one drawing for the building.  This drawing is to include all structural elements, utilities, sidewalks, landscaping, and anything else related to the property which can be depicted and documented on the drawing.  I then use layers to mix and match elements and views to print from paperspace.  This works very well when it works.  Is it a better strategy to make several drawings of the property and limit the number of elements in each drawing?

3.  Would it help to increase the Ram to 16GB?

4.  I would like to post the file here but do not know if the site will support a file this large.  What is the file size limit for posting on the forum?

John Earl

TC 2016 Pro Plat 64b ver 23.2 build 61.2 RedSDK
Intel i5 6500 3.2G 8GB Ram Win7 Pro 64b SP1
MSI Z170-A Nvidia GTX960 Asus 27" 2560 x 1440

You will find Purge at File/ Drawing Utilities >> Purge, but be aware of how it works, make a copy of your drawing and test on that copy first time.

I believe it will help with more Ram

Max filesize for 1 file  is 4 MB i think,, max 8 MB on max 5 files, you will se it in the Attachment area  when you try to attach something, only the filesize there is crazy

Do you have Draft's inside your file

Torfinn

Thanks, Torfinn.

I have not used the drafting palette, if that is what you are referring to as "Draft's".

I will look into additional RAM.

John

Yes, i'm thinking about the Drafting Palette
As a draft actually make a copy of your drawing and by that very easy increase the file size dramaticly, especial if you have many of them.
So if you start to use it, when you are happy with the result, explode the output one time, then you can delete it from the palette and it is just a bounch of lines that's take nearly no place at all.

Torfinn

Thanks again, Torfinn.

It turns out I did have drafting palette objects in my drawing.  I had forgotten I played with some views and sections of the garage using the drafting palette some time ago.  By deleting the drafting palette objects, I reduced the size of the drawing file to 14.4MB.

This was also a valuable lesson regarding how the drafting palette works!

John Earl

Another way to do big projects is to use xrefs.
I usually go by storey .

Max filesize for 1 file  is 4 MB i think,, max 8 MB on max 5 files, you will se it in the Attachment area  when you try to attach something, only the filesize there is crazy

Did you, perhaps, mean 4 GB?  Because I've got TCW files over 130 MB.


Jeff

Have you ever try'd to attach a 130 MB file in a post here at the Forum

Torfinn

Yeah... I really wasn't awake enough. 


Jeff

I tried 3 times to post the file.  It is a TCW file 2016 Pro Platinum.

When attempting to post, I get a progress circle for a while and then my message disappears and I am presented with a new blank message window.  The file attachments and any message I have composed just disappears.

The message window states at the bottom that attached files can be no longer than 999999999KB in size.  This is clearly not right unless I do not understand what they mean.  I count 9 digits before the KB.

Since my file is 15MB, I will assume the forum cannot handle a file that large.

Hi John

Thats correct, and all the 999's is what i say earlier is crazy
Have you try'd to zip the file to see it will be lower than 4 MB ??
Else you can take a part of it that show your issue and upload.
Or you can upload it on like DropBox and just give the link for it in your post

Torfinn

I find the program is slow and sometimes jittery when working on this drawing.  I can still work with it but it causes me some concern as it seems to me that the program is not running optimally.  On smaller files, the program is steady and fast.  I don't know if this is due to the size of the drawing file or the existence of artifacts in the drawing file.  Since the drawing file is several years old, I have added and taken away a lot of elements over time and, of course, started the file in an earlier version of the program (either TC19PP or TC21PP).

The program crashes with this file when I am working in wireframe and I then draft render one layer while selecting the show non-renderable objects option.  This shows the rendered layer along with the wireframe layers as well.  On another drawing this works fine and it even works on this larger drawing some of the time.  I don't know if this is an approved method, but it is very useful.

I have zipped and attached the file.  It is in 2016PP.

I invite any comments on the style and structure of the drawing.

Thanks All!

Your drawing ACIS setting was set to 100!

This really will slow down your drawing experience.... lower it to 50 or 25 depending on complexity to get good speed. Only increase for rendering etc when needed...

Thanks, Darrel.

That seems to help.  I had not thought of the faceter quality slowing the performance, even though it says it on the menu page.

I really didn't think of changing it depending upon what part of the drawing I was working on but it is really easy to change so that is a great tip!

John

What does 'Task Manager' report on your current RAM usage ? What is the most RAM your mobo and OS will support ??

Nik,

I have not checked the Task Manager Ram Usage but that is a good idea.  I will run the program and check it before and after installing the RAM I have on order.  I will report the difference.

I have a newer motherboard and am sure it will support more RAM than my checkbook.  I am using windows 7Pro 64 SP1.

I have 8 GB of RAM installed and 8 GB on order.  The memory is DDR4-2400.  The RAM is on 4GB cards so this will fill all 4 RAM slots on my board so I will be full for now.

The replies I have gotten here have really helped the program run faster and made me aware of some important considerations regarding performance.

Thanks!

John

I installed 8GB addditional of DDR4-2400 RAM to get a total of 16GB.

Before installing the additional RAM, Task Manager showed 46% Memory Usage while processing a Quality Rendering.  With the additional memory, Task Manager now shows 25% Memory Usage while processing a Quality Rendering.  I did not test to see if rendering time improved.

What I learned:

1.  Drafting Pallete used a lot of memory if the drawing is large.
2.  Faceter Quality slows operation when the file is large.
3.  Purge tool is available to help reduce file size.
4.  Having the 'Use Choice' activated when in the selector mode will identify duplicate objects which are sometimes created during copy operations.
5.  It is easy to post a large file by compressing it.  Windows 7 has a Zip File utility.

Everything is working great now and I learned a lot.

Thanks, everyone!

John Earl

TC 2016 Pro Plat 64b ver 23.2 build 61.2 RedSDK  Win 7 Pro 64B SP1
Intel i5 6500 3.2G 16GB DDR4-2400 RAM
Motherboard MSI Z170-A Nvidia GTX960  Monitor Asus 27" 2560 x 1440