Takes forever to load drawing file especially with images.

[civildja]

It seems like every time I try to open a drawing file it takes quite some time for it to load. The program also ends up saying "not responding" in the process.

One example of a large file with images...

I have a drawing file 1,468 KB large. It consists of cover page with 6 sheets of details. The drawing has about 30 images referenced in. The drawing loads relatively quick in acad 2005 xp 32 bit. I am running windows 7 x64 and civil 3D 2011, and it takes around 5 minutes or so for the drawing to load. Is there anything I can do to improve the drawing load time?

Or would my best bet be to figure out a different way to insert all of the images instead of the image manager?

Any help would be great,

Thanks.

[JSpell]

TLDR:  get more ram.

get more ram. Windows 7 by nature is a hog.  We have 3 3gb w7 machines with dual core processors, 2   8gb quad cores.  they dont pause or freeze the same.  Believe me, an under powered windows 7 is depressing.  So the switch from XP to 7 and the change from 2005 to 2011 is the issue, not your images.  unless you upgraded hardware to match the demand, you are attempting to pull a yacht with a bicycle.

[civildja]

I probably should have listed my computer specs

Windows 7 x64

AMD Phenom 8450e Triple-Core processor

8 GB ram

ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card

So as you can see I've already got 8 gigs of ram and a triple-core processor. I would think that Civil 3D 2011 x64 should run smoothly and load quicker.

[omc-usnr]

What's your hard drive speed, and have you defragged recently?  Are you loading from Vault through a server?  Those are other bottleneck spots.

Reid

[Murph_Map]

The foramt that the images are in plays a big part of the load time also, SID files need to be uncompressed then rendered. TIF/JPG not so much.

[civildja]

7200 rpm hard drive. The compuer was just purchased a couple weeks ago, but I do defrag regularly. I am not using vault. Would vault help speed up this process or slow it down? The files are all coming from a shared folder on our server.

[WERNERSMITH1201]

Had the exact same problem on a new Dell Pc.  Have 6Gb mem, 15k SAS HDD, quadro fx display card... but Civil 3d 2011 took minutes to just to open !!! - took 20min+ to load a dwg with a couple of mrsid images. 

My problem was solved by reloading ALL the drivers, setting the page file to system managed (for what it was worth!), also loaded the nvidia autodesk performance display driver (don't think that one helped!), but yes, now civil 3d takes 3-4sec. to launch, the same drawings that took 20min+ now loads in approx 30sec!!

I doubt that I can give you a clear answer on exactly everything that was done, know I played with the cmos settings as well, but yeah, start with updating all the drivers.

Hope you win this one

[D_A_N_I_E_L]

I have had this problem as well with extremely long load times. I uninstalled Autodesk Vault and our drawings open in a matter of seconds vs 15+ minutes (and in some instances waiting 5+ hours without opening). 

We are using Civil 3D on custom built GIS machines running Windows 7 64 bit.

[antoniovinci]

I'd bet it's a network issue, sir, or loaded images not more existing: run the _IMAGE command, and unplug everything.

[tcorey]

We have seen great productivity enhancements by avoiding the use of XRef when images are attached. Instead, use ClassicXref. This command does not use the modeless dialog, therefor using far less system memory.