Civil 3d 2012-Most efficient drawing management

[civ_engineer]

My civil3d 2012 is slower than paint drying.

In an attempt to decrease file size, and hopefully retain my hair, I'm trying to break out drawings into smaller ones.

I currently have my alignments in one drawing and corridors/cross sections in another.
This would work fine on a small project.. but this is a 3 mile road with several intersections.
Everytime I edit one of my assemblies I have to wait for "something" to update.. I have no idea what. I have my corridor rebuild turned off.  I'm thinking its updating the cross section or something. 

Is there a way to stop this..."update"?

I assumed not, so I tried to put the cross sections in a separate drawing than the corridor so this update would not happen... fail.  Apparently, you can't datalink a corridor.  I have discovered that if you xref the corridor drawing, you can then sample the corridor then cut cross sections.... this defeats the purpose though.  I was hoping to get away from referencing the corridor drawing because of it's size.

What is the most efficient setup for drawings, datalinks, corridors, cross sections, etc.?

Has anyone come up with an answer/fix for the slowness of civil3d?  I've read several posts full of ideas but no good answers.

DELL w/dual 2.8GHz

nvidia fx580, 12 GB Ram, win. 7, 64-bit system

Which graphics driver works the best? I'm currently using Nvidia's autocad driver, but I'm not sure it's optimized for 2012.
There are a lot of Nvidia control panel settings too.  Is there anything in particular in there I should toggle on or off?

Thanks in advance.

[civ_engineer]

I tried that.  I referenced the corridor drawing so I could sample the corridor but I have to resample every time I get back into the cross section drawing because the sample lines lose the connection with the corridor... even thought I didn't unload or detach that corridor xref.

From previous posts, it sounds like this just happens to me...

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

I've had it happen on occasion, can't find a common reason why. The thing I really don't like about that is if we're plotting the sheet set, you don't have confidence that the SLG kept the association with the corridor. I've plotted many empty cross section sheets because of that issue. My workflow now is to open the Cross Sections drawing and plot them separately. Lisa E. Pohlmeyer CAD MANAGER Williamson County Dept. of Infrastructure Road & Bridge DivisionDirect: (512) 943-3364 Main: (512) 943-3330 Resurfacing Website

[civ_engineer]

Oddly enough, that makes me feel better knowing it's not just me... LOL

[smitht]

Spoiler

This is what I posted about yesterday as it was driving me crazy.  I am using 2012 and don't remember this problem with earlier versions.  I believe, after much aggravation, that updating/rebuilding the corridor in the design dwg causes the loss of the connection to the corridor and its associated surfaces in the x'refd section dwg. 

Autodesk, are you guys aware of this?  Should I put in a subscription request?

Tricia Smith

Somerset County Engineering

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

I can't reproduce that scenario exactly, and I can't reproduce the issue at all right now. I've tried several combinations of rebuilding the corridor, saving, reloading the xref in the cross sections dwg. All I know is that it doesn't happen intermittently (don't you just hate that word?). I haven't submitted a case to Autodesk because I can't consistently reproduce the error. So, we're not "alone". If someone could come up with a workflow that consistently disassociates the SLG from the corridor, I'll try to reproduce here. Then, maybe we'll have something to go on. Lisa Pohlmeyer

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

I really hate it when I think I've proofed a post, only to find later that there's a glaring error.

All I know is that it doesn't happen intermittently (don't you just hate that word?).

I actually meant to say that it DOES happen intermittently. Any yes, I hate that word and so does my car mechanic.

[Joe-Bouza]

Hey Lisa

Bill proofs all mine, maybe he can do you too.

[wfberry]

Gee thanks Joseph!  BTW, I have let you off the hook recently, but I can start back.

Bjill

[Joe-Bouza]

Bjill  

[troma]

How about creating a TIN surface from your corridor, dref the surface and sample that instead of the xref corridor?

I know, it's one more thing to slow down the drawing, but it may be your workaround for this specific problem.

[Hammer.john.j]

year old topic, but still relevant.

I'm reading comments about putting sample lines in a section base drawing.... i'm not sure if you're implying your sample lines are separate from your sections, but if so i'd like to hear about that workflow.

Corridors = harware and software resources.

Civil 3D drawings open slower than other non-vertical drawing types especially if they are bloated.

therefore a balance must be maintained between drawing opening and closing time versus singular drawings and switching tabs until you're out of ram....

consider that even if you follow bmp and xref and dref, bmp doesn't address limitations on quantity of sheets in a single cad file.  i believe that issue to be a concern, therefore i'm trying to limit drawings such that they contain less than 10-20 sheets each.  at what point, would you follow bmp for everything else and have 1 sheet (4 sections per sheet) per drawing?

counterpoint - opening and plotting 70 sheet drawings (4 sections per sheet or 280 sections) of cross sections, must be worse than having 70 sheets in a cad file?

thoughts?

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

Our workflow is exclusively rural roadways, new/maintenance/rehab.  We typically have a ROW that is anywhere from 40' - 100' wide. We limit our layouts per dwg to 6, 8 cross sections per sheet. Most of our projects are phased so that the segment we're working on is about 2 miles or less. This seems to be about the max we want to impact our constituents for delays/detours.  I have tried all the layouts in 1 dwg and each layout in a separate dwg.  The workflow of about 6 per dwg seems to work best for us.  I haven't had a new project to design in 2014 yet, so I don't know if there's any improvements. We're skipping 2013.

[Hammer.john.j]

here's what i'm thinking....

create a cross sections xref with no sheet drawings in it

then create cross sections sheet drawings 1 per drawing, 6 sheet per drawing, whatever.

the concept is that by using this workflow, you eliminate the sheet drawing from loading the corridor xref because it's an overlay in the cross sections xref, and that is subsquently left behind when you xref the cross section drawing into the sheet drawing?

ever tried that?

edit:  by the way agree less than 10 sheets per drawing seems to work well.

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

Yep, that's our workflow exactly

[Hammer.john.j]

how does that work for you if you end up adding say a critical section a driveway or a wall section, etc?  I am somewhat paranoid of the implications stemming from additional sample lines on say sheet 2... lol

[Lisa_Pohlmeyer]

Hmmm, not sure. Haven't had that scenario come up yet. We're pretty careful to plan out our sample lines and we often overkill in the xref sections drawing, then remove what we don't need. We don't create the sheets until we're ready to submit.

I'd be leery as well. In fact, not sure I want to even think about it.

[Hammer.john.j]

I think with this work flow, I'm inclined to go with 1 sheet per drawing, if you add a sample line on sheet 1 and it pushes all the sections around requiring an additional sheet.... it's easier to add a cad drawing in a sequence than to add a layout tab in say drawing 3 of 8.... because addind a drawing relates directly to "a sheet".  It's easy to rename cad files with SSMpropeditor, and the corresponding sheets.  It's a lot of cad files but at some point you have to pay the piper.... and i think i'd prefer to pay opening and closing drawings...

all of the sections are actually in one drawing so fixing sheet drawings is based on the need to add a sheet, worse case scenario inbetween sheet 1 and sheet 2 lol.

i think i got it now, thank you.

[county.engineer]

How do you create sheet drwaings in the Xref cross section drawing without any sample line groups?