Huge Subdivision work flow

[sfuller]

I have a huge subdivision that we are about to do in civil 3d.  The subdivision has over 1800 lots.  I am wondering what is the best way to go about this.  At the moment we are thinking we have to do the alignments, profiles and corridors all in one design drawing for it all to be dynamic?  If so this file is going to be huge.  Is there a way we can split it up and still keep everything dynamic?

Any thoughts will be appreciated!

C3D 2013 SP1

[Joe-Bouza]

You're painting me into a corner here I believe to ballooning is caused by corruptions in the gradings (no confirmation from adsk on that pure hyperbola on my part)

The items all came back with no ill effect I can speak of with regard to the DS ( I didn't see a problem.)

The gradings all came back but I had to use the grading editor on any surface projection to re-assign the surface

[Neilw_05]

I'd like to ask: considering the time we spend on issues with performance, corruption, lost work, looking for workarounds and fixes, how do you justify the time/cost to company owners and clients?

[jmayo-EE]

We do it just like we did when we were using LDD, AutoCAD and HASP. We find creative ways to bill it if we can if we can't we suck it up and hopefully learn. I really would like to know what program is going to or has provided a perfect environment for your work.

[troma]

Hmm...

There's no such thing as perfect software or hardware?  (Try to avoid the point about the imperfect user though.)

Using C3D is better and faster than without it / pencil & paper?

Cars break down sometimes, but it's still faster than a horse on average?  Breakdowns are therefore part of the budget.

Of course it's much harder to come up with a justification for one specific meltdown than it is to justify the occasional hypothetical one.

[troma]

Joe, don't worry, I'm not going to sue you!  Just trying to pick your brain as much as possible.

Let me summarize your steps:

1. WBLOCK everything from old drawing.
2. New drawing from template.
3. Insert w/ explode the block.
4. Use DC to get layouts back
5. Purge all, purge regapps.

I can pause at this point and see what I've got.  This will let me know the quality of the drawing (gradings, shortcuts etc.) and the size of it (i.e.whether it's any better than it was before).  The first one I'll try it on doesn't have any objects shortcut out, only in, so I'm pretty confident it will be fine.  The other one has all my alignments & profiles shortcut out, so that worries me a little.

Then I can take the final step:

 6.  SAVEAS to overwrite the old file.

[Neilw_05]

Sure all software has issues but most are minor in comparison in my experience. It's been a challenge to demonstrate the productivity gains when so much gets offset from battles with the software. So far management is not convinced we can justify the cost to implement.

[Joe-Bouza]

You look good from here. the objects are going to insert with (1) but I thing you DS will recognize what it is

[troma]

WBLOCK wouldn't work.  No error message, but no file created.

I tried to just INSERT the original into a new template.  Froze up for 25 mins, but it did it.  No point though, it's just as big & heavy as the original.

[Joe-Bouza]

thats wierd? sure everthing was selected?

[gccdaemon]

When it comes to large plan sets like this, i seperate things out based on use. alignments in one file, water profiles in another wastewater profiles in another, storm profiles in another, surfaces in another, etc etc. When you get down to it these files are going to be x-refs. When you cut out the data you don't need like wastewater and storm profiles in a water plan sheet it starts to add up. if you're going to split, go the whole way.

[troma]

WBLOCK still hung up for a while, so it was thinking about it.  But didn't do anything.

[troma]

Not sure what you mean by 'go the whole way'.  There's no pipe networks in either of these drawings.  One of my drawings has alignments, profiles, intersections, corridors, corridor surfaces.  The other has feature lines ( & many labels) finished ground surfaces, pregrade surfaces, OG stripped surface and volume surfaces.  Where would you suggest I make additional splits?  When I split before, both resulting drawings were basically the same size as the original one drawing!