Data References cause program to freeze

[dla4y4]

We just discovered data at our office, and I am pretty stoked about them 90% of the time. We do have one problem with them though. We are doing a small road, with 10 or so alignments and a few pipe networks of 40 pipes and structures. 1 surface, and that is about it. I made a cross sections sheet with our design file xrefed and data references to everything in it. Now it won't open. I can copy it to my local hard drive, run a recover, and then open it, save it back, add in all the data references and redo labels, but I can't open it from there.

Anybody have any ideas what we may have done wrong. Is there some way to have it open without syncing?

Thanks, Dan.

[owenmull]

I have a hunch at what is going on here, but could you post maybe a flow diagram of what is "data referenced" to which file?

To illustrate the concept: You have Drawing A, Drawing B, and Drawing C, lets just say one represents your PLAN, one your Cross Sections, and another your Topo data. 

In Drawing A, you data reference surfaces, alignments, etc. You then xref to Drawing B, and data references come along for the ride. You then xref Drawing B (already containing Drawing A) into Drawing C. You data reference into C. From here things get messy.

See what is going on here? There is a "circular" pattern of xref and data referencing. Essentially, AutoCad is trying to load the same data reference multiple times, and since you have several of them, it takes a long, long time.

Try sorting through your Data References in the problem drawing in order to clean this up.

HTH

-owenmull

[dla4y4]

Yeah, we have a design, topo, then production sheets. Anytime anything is xrefed it is done as an overlay. We understood this to be that I can xref topo into design, then desgin into production, and topo wouldn't come with it.

And the data references are saved to a seperate folder and then gathered from there, and other drawings that have data references seem to open up just fine. 

Anyway, I am now unable to open the cross section drawing at all. It stops at reading triangles from file. So, theres that.

[owenmull · Accepted solution]

Yes, your data references are in the same folder. That's default by C3D. 

What I'm getting at is that you may have the same things data referenced several times over again.

To illustrate, again, forgive my simpistic example:

You have Drawing A, Step 1.) You reference in (as "attachments") Drawings X,Y,Z. (topo drawings, plats, etc.). Step 2.) You create Drawing B, (Production, lets say), reference in Drawing A, X, Y, & Z. Step 3.) You create Drawing C, reference in Drawing A, B, X, Y, & Z. Now it takes an ungodly amount of time to open Drawing C.

The problem:

Step 1 is fine. No problems here. The problem lies after Step 2. You only need to reference in A, as it already contains X, Y, & Z. So now you have X, Y, & Z referenced twice. Now, in Step 3, you only need to reference A again, but in the example, X, Y, & Z are referenced three times.

So, in essence, you only ever have 3 references, but Cadd is trying to load them X*3 number of times.

Check to see whether the same drawing is referenced multiple times in all of your drawings.

When you attach a drawing as an 'overlay,' when you xref that drawing to another, the 'overlay' will not go along with the xref.

I almost always use the attachment method. In this case, it seems you would want your topo to come along with, and since it is xref'd as an overlay, it does not come along for the ride when your production gets xref'd. 

HTH

-owenmull

[dla4y4]

Yep. There was an xref of a draiwing with a picture that was in the topo. Then that was also xrefed as an attachment in design. It still takes quite a while to load but is much nicer now.

[owenmull]

That may be part of it, depending on how big the picture is, what format it is, etc.

Keep chugging.

-owenmull