Drawings Open Slow After Export from Microstation

[tarnoldQDESA]

Hey Everyone, 

My office is working on migrating to Civil 3D from Microstation Power Survey V8i and I have been working on exporting details from Microstation to Civil3D. I used the export command in Microstation to save the files as .dwg files. Before I open the files, they are roughly around 25 kb in data. After opening the drawings, waiting for a while, and finally saving these drawings, the files grow in size to roughly 450 kb. Why do these files take so long to open? Is Civil 3D writing data in the background because the files originated in Microstation? Any thoughts? 

[rl_jackson · Accepted solution]

With C3D there are at minimum default styles and settings that reside in the file, if you open the drawings directly it would take some time to update that drawing the C3D standard styles. You might try starting with the standard NCS dwt which would have the styles already and insert the drawings like a block. Also, you could just import the dgn file directly to the NCS dwt file, which may reduce some of the problems you're seeing.

[tcorey · Accepted solution]

Save as a dgn in MicroStation, then import that dgn into a new Civil 3D drawing using _DGNImport command. I trust Autodesk's interpretation of a DGN more than I trust Bentley's creation of a DWG.