The Vault or is there another way?

[jbear0000]

I am working on a subdivision that is just over 100 acres. The topo was created from aerial contours. I turned those contours into an existing surface and built alignments, profiles, corridors and road grading. The drawing got up to around 13 megs and was running slow and starting to crash a lot. So what I would really like to do is break it up a little by placing my existing contours and surface into a base drawing and bringing it into my main drawing as an xref. Now the problem with this is that the existing surface is the starting point for just about everything else. If I use an xref I get the line work, but not the actual surface. I really like to keep my drawings as simple as possible and an xref is probably as complicated as I want it to get. So is there anyway to access that surface contained within the base drawing without using the vault?

[Anonymous]

depending on what kind of accuracy you are looking for- try this
http://civil3drocks.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-much-surface-is-too-much.html

Also note that once you build that surface from aerial topo, you can remove
the actual aerial topo polylines from the dwg and put them somewhere safe
(since that is what you legally show on your plan- they are the topo of
record, but you can xref those in)

Often times the aerial topo polylines themselves are file hogs.

--
Dana Breig Probert
http://civil3drocks.blogspot.com/
CADapult Ltd
Empowering Design With Innovative Solutions
www.cadapult.net
----------------------------------------------
wrote in message news:5258705@discussion.autodesk.com...
I am working on a subdivision that is just over 100 acres. The topo was
created from aerial contours. I turned those contours into an existing
surface and built alignments, profiles, corridors and road grading. The
drawing got up to around 13 megs and was running slow and starting to crash
a lot. So what I would really like to do is break it up a little by placing
my existing contours and surface into a base drawing and bringing it into my
main drawing as an xref. Now the problem with this is that the existing
surface is the starting point for just about everything else. If I use an
xref I get the line work, but not the actual surface. I really like to keep
my drawings as simple as possible and an xref is probably as complicated as
I want it to get. So is there anyway to access that surface contained within
the base drawing without using the vault?

[acoursen]

Can you remove the aerial pl's if they are part of your surface definition? I've tried that only to lose them from the definition. How do you remove them and still keep them as part of the surface?

Andrew Coursen

[Anonymous]

I've had varying degress of success (with '06 only, to this point), mostly
good results, by exporting to LandXML from your original topo drawing.
Import that XML into your 'design' file. If you update the 'existing' XML
file, you can remove the snapshot in the 'design' file and rebuild, which
will re-import the XML without breaking any data associations to that
existing surface.

Not exactly auto-update, but very reliable. I cannot speak to what this
would do in '07 within the Vault scenario. I hope it's still possible.

wrote in message news:5258705@discussion.autodesk.com...
I am working on a subdivision that is just over 100 acres. The topo was
created from aerial contours. I turned those contours into an existing
surface and built alignments, profiles, corridors and road grading. The
drawing got up to around 13 megs and was running slow and starting to crash
a lot. So what I would really like to do is break it up a little by placing
my existing contours and surface into a base drawing and bringing it into my
main drawing as an xref. Now the problem with this is that the existing
surface is the starting point for just about everything else. If I use an
xref I get the line work, but not the actual surface. I really like to keep
my drawings as simple as possible and an xref is probably as complicated as
I want it to get. So is there anyway to access that surface contained within
the base drawing without using the vault?

[Anonymous]

Export/Import LandXML works well.

wrote in message news:5259092@discussion.autodesk.com...
Can you remove the aerial pl's if they are part of your surface definition?
I've tried that only to lose them from the definition. How do you remove
them and still keep them as part of the surface?

Andrew Coursen

[Anonymous]

Yes, but you have to tell the surface to "hang on" to them first. see
attached image for where to "copy dependant objects"





--
Dana Breig Probert
http://civil3drocks.blogspot.com/
CADapult Ltd
Empowering Design With Innovative Solutions
www.cadapult.net
----------------------------------------------
wrote in message news:5259092@discussion.autodesk.com...
Can you remove the aerial pl's if they are part of your surface definition?
I've tried that only to lose them from the definition. How do you remove
them and still keep them as part of the surface?

Andrew Coursen