Using a block several times makes my drawing big and slow

[martinSFWWX]

Hi, I made a drawing today which consists of approximately 50 copies of the same block and some additional lines, which makes my drawing really big and slow. How can I solve this? My feeling says using a block should save memory and thus make AutoCAD work better, but that doesn't seem the case. Thanks for your answers! 

Greetz, Martin

[hwalker · Accepted solution]

Does your block have multiple visibility states?

If it does this is the problem.

If a block has multiple visibility states when you put it in a drawing you are putting in "ALL" the linework again even if you can't see it.

[martinSFWWX]

Hi, that sounds logical, but I can't find out if it has. I'm using a block
someone else created and never use visibility states myself. The block
itself seems to consist of two blocks, does that say anything? Or is there
an easy way to remove multiple visibility states? Some Googling and trying
didn't work out unfortunately.

[pendean]

Share your DWG file here: if it's slow for you it ought to be slow for us as well.

Share a screenshot of your ABOUT command pop-up too when you get a chance.

[martinSFWWX · Accepted solution]

Gentlemen, thanks for your reactions! Instead of going into Autocad-details I usually don't need, I figured the easy workaround was to open the block, manually redraw the parts I need and deleting the old lines. This reduced drawing size from 45 MB to 0.5 MB, solving my problem. And learning me a valuable lesson! 

[hwalker]

Definitely sounds like there was a lot of redundant lines in that block