Preemptively hiding elements in an NWF file

[thniels]

We have a situation where an NWF file is getting bigger and bigger, to the point where it gets time consuming to load. Most users need to have all elements shown while a few would like to have certain large elements hidden before loading the file, to increase performance. Is this possible without creating two separate NWF files?

[dgorsman]

Hidden elements are still loaded, so I don't think that will reduce loading time.  It will only help a little with navigating in the model.

I've had extremely large (both in file size and number/complexity of faces) models load quite quickly, and without navigation slowness.  What hardware and OS is being used?

[thniels]

Ah, perhaps you are right. We are running Win 7 x64 / 8GB RAM (HP Elitebook workstations). The files can be rather large when combined. The one being looked into right now contains a number of point clouds and takes appr. 15 minutes to load without resolving references.

[dgorsman · Accepted solution]

8 GB is what I'd consider scraping the bottom of the barrel - what I'd give a supervisor who does more scheduling and managing than technical work.  12 - 16 GB is what we have on designers workstations, and things are pretty zippy even with multiple applications (including Navisworks) running.

[Patrick_Aps_9121]

Don't append point clouds "in advance". Create an NWD without the point clouds and an seperate NWD per point cloud. Let the users make their own NWF that loads the 1st NWD and then they have to append and delete the NWD's of the point cloud they need. Hinding Point clouds does not increase performance.

[thniels]

We often do it that way but in this case we can't. The files are generated from different sources round robin and by persisting them in NWD we risk working in outdated files. No, I think more RAM is the better option in this scenario (and I am sure the one option that the users would applaud the most). A good tip nonetheless.