Tool Palette Performance - Single DWG with All Blocks, or Multiple DWGs?

izzyloh — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 19:50:11 GMT

Hello Friends,

I have a question about best practices for tool palettes. My company has several block palettes - sheet anno palette, signal design palette, etc... Each palette has number of blocks, all of which live in the same source DWG. Example:

Example Signal Design Palette

Dynamic Pullbox Block (source: sigl_block_lib.dwg)
Dynamic Veh Signal Face (source: sigl_block_lib.dwg)
Dynamic Ped Signal Face (source: sigl_block_lib.dwg)
Etc..

I wanted to know if we would see better performance for our tool palettes if each block on the palette had its own source drawing. Like this:

Example Signal Design Palette

Dynamic Pullbox Block (source: sig_dyn_pb.dwg)
Dynamic Veh Signal Face (source: sig_dyn_vs.dwg)
Dynamic Ped Signal Face (source: sig_dyn_ps.dwg)
Etc..

I do not fully understand the loading mechanics of what happens when a block is click on a palette to insert into the current drawing. I supposed my fear is that it loads the entire source drawing when only a single block is needed from said source drawing. This could be a problem when some of our palettes with have 50, 100+ blocks.

Thanks for any insights.

Re: Tool Palette Performance - Single DWG with All Blocks, or Multiple DWGs?

norman.yuan — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 15:40:41 GMT

When a block is inserted into current drawing (assume, the block's definition does not exist in current drawing prior to the inserting), it is 2-step work behind the scene: first, the block definition from the external dwg file (be it a dwg file containing many block definitions, or a block dwg file) is imported into current drawing as block definition; then a block reference is created based on this block definition. CAD user only see inserting block from Tool PaletteSet as one-step work.

So, your question is regarding the first step: the Tool Palette shows/list multiple block definitions that all stored in single source file, or in multiple individual block dwg file? When tool palette shows, AutoCAD would need to read all block definitions into memory in order to generate block images shown in the Palette. So, if it is a single file with multiple block definitions, AutoCAD would only open one bigger dwg file in memory; while if it is many individual block dwg files, AutoCAD would need to read all of them one-by-one into memory. Form this view angle, one world consider opening one bigger file is more efficient than opening many smaller file. However, with a reasonable CAD computer these days, the difference would be negligible, I'd say: when the tool palette is open, all the data reading is done and user would be very much careless about how much time it takes for tool palette to open, which may even have been opened in AutoCAD startup anyway.

Therefore, performance isn't something I'd worry about in most cases, unless your tool palettes showing thousands of blocks. However, behind the scene, the difference of having one a few source draws that contain all your block definitions, or having thousands of individual block drawing files may pose different CAD resources management issues to CAD manager. Each has its pros/cons and CAD manager chooses whatever he/she favors.

topic Tool Palette Performance - Single DWG with All Blocks, or Multiple DWGs? in Civil 3D Customization Forum

Tool Palette Performance - Single DWG with All Blocks, or Multiple DWGs?

Re: Tool Palette Performance - Single DWG with All Blocks, or Multiple DWGs?