How to stop synchronizing data reference when opening a drawing?

[wang890]

is there a way to stop the synchronization at the start? i would like to synchoronze manually later.

any system variables?

[Anonymous]

What a great article, I agree fully. Dealing with Autodesk's narrow-minded way of designing pipe networks is my day-to-day task. Unfortunatly, you loose hope as nothing ever improves and the fact that they made Infraworks just proofs that the people in charge doesn't have a clue 😞

[Neilw_05]

How do you handle pipe crossings James? Are they dynamic? What about labeling them? Can you create custom labels that show the content you want?

[Neilw_05]

We've all heard of "click bait". With Civil 3D we have "click wait". This software is driving me to quitting my job. I cannot tolerate this horrible performance. Synchronizing references on open is just one of many aggravations with this software.

I HATE MY JOB!

[JamesMaeding]

@Neilw_05 

Good questions, as I have a long way to go on these pipe routines (dreams?).

My pipe tools have actually evolved way beyond simple display of alignment geometry as a 3d pline.

They have lots of hidden data as xrecords, containing the last used horizontal/vertical geometry, display style, and alignment names they are hooked to, if hooked. They can also be unhooked so only the pline has the data, which is what feature lines wish they were, but instead are "hub and spoke" architecture which forces elevations at segment start/ends and so on as mentioned in the article.

Anyway, I do not yet have what I consider decent pipe crossing labeling or even reporting. I started on a tool to do sections of pipes along some line, but want it to work on xreffed pipes too so need to work that out. In general, I use my "ID" command which reports deltaz between any two points, so I pick two nearby points on the 3d plines and subtract the dia to get distance between (horrible, I know). I have many plans to get that in order.

As for labels, we have plan and profile labeling tools with styles that allow formulas and generally what we need. They are not dynamic, but could be. I could write a couple pages on why we do that.

The thing about all this is, if I want to make a pipe crossing label/info tool, I can any time. I have the code and know how to make lisp and .net work together to do all this. This post might trigger me to finally do that. What you don't want is a set of tools totally controlled by a team buried in a large company. Dave Simeone and team simply do not control their destiny anymore. The infraworks team is hindered also, as the items they would like to deal with (alignments, surfaces...) are stuck in drawings, not an external database. They need to redo that, and have drawing objects just be display/edit tools, not the original data. Then other progs can access the data. We do that now, it works and worked for LDT and many other civil progs. Peter Funk asked me about that before c3d was written, which option was better. Well, now I know having written our own civil program. We are just starting though. Civil software is like 2 out of 10 IMO. We could do so much more but finding investors for software development is tricky, so my development is funded by our design teams' billing. The vacuum is huge though, someone has to fill it.

[Neilw_05]

It is a huge undertaking to create custom tools for this. I wish you well in that effort. It sounds like you have a good background in Autocad programming.

I am not sure what you mean about Civil software being 2 out of 10 but I sure wish there was a better option for us. I've looked at Bentley and Carlson, the only other main players in the game (that I am aware of). I guess there is the Civil Solutions product (formerly known as Advanced Road Design). It looks like a very capable product but I just don't have time to evaluate it. One of the problems with considering other software solutions is the user base. It would be hard to find users who have experience with the less common products. Too, you don't really know how well a software will work until you have already invested considerable resources and used it for a while. Such is the dilemma. In the meanwhile we have already invested considerable time and money into C3D and it is not working for us.  The software has severe performance issues, the grading tools are unusable and there is a constant need to research issues and find workarounds when the software fails to perform properly.

[JamesMaeding]

@Neilw_05 

By 2 of 10, I mean our data containers like alignments and surfaces...are so rudimentary. Yes, they are the correct civil engineering data containers for higher objects, but then look what adesk did for its pipes. They did hub and spoke, right under our noses, knowing final design plans either have plan and profile, or just plan callouts whose PVIs do not always line up with plan segment change points. The other softwares seem to have followed their lead, great.

We should be at the point where we are teaching the computer how to do pipeline profiles. It should be looking at crossings and deciding what to suggest. We are not close to that though as the quest for dynamicness has tied everyone's hands. The priorities of civil software should be easy sharing of data, easy access from outside and with simple tools like explorer, stable linework and callouts that fail gracefully and only update when requested, and interfaces that match production of plans. Each program I have run across do a few of those well, then totally both the rest. My tools hit what I consider a really good foundation, but I have not specialized anything yet. I should have sewer pipe runs, dry util runs, dowmestic and reclaimed water runs. Each would have a refined interface and allow placement of side laterals like services and blow-offs. There is so far to go, hence the 2 of 10.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone discovered any solutions to this problem?

A lot of users in our office are beginning to work from home and we're seeing some significant issues because our server has some pretty poor download and upload speeds. It's taking way too long to sync our drawings on startup and really killing productivity.

If our users could choose which references to manually sync, this would save a lot of time.

Thanks, all!

[JamesMaeding]

@Anonymous 

The problem is autodesk would say drefs that do not synch are broken. Can't fix....isn't...

[Anonymous]

Having the same issue... some dwgs take several hours to open. Wreaking havoc on plans that use those xrefs. Not even a very complicated dwg.

[JamesMaeding]

@Anonymous 

Several hours? My gosh, that would be called "not working" in my book.

I can't believe you waited that long, I would have killed the session.

Autodesk should be dying to troubleshoot your situation, as its like analyzing a crashed car.

I bet they could help so many people by looking into a situation like yours...

[rl_jackson]

I'd be thinking your DRs were created in a different version of C3D and you need to open them individually and save to your current version

[Anonymous]

That does help! thx

[Anonymous]

The one way I found to open without synchronizing, is to

1. Open the reference manager
2. select the xref that is the problem
3. direct the path to the wrong place, (like maybe your desktop) and save changes

Then when you open it will ignore that drawing all together.  the problem is that when you reattach the xref is starts to sync all over again.  So it only works if you can work on the drawing without that xref, or can wait for the sync.  At least in this situation you get a progress bar so you knw something it happening.

[jwilliamsZRQUC]

I know your post is from 3 years ago.  was curious if you found a solution? My short time working from home with covid, sucked - felt like I wasn't getting hardly any work done

[JamesMaeding · Accepted solution]

@jwilliamsZRQUC 

I have not heard anything on this. Our LA office still does not support work at home for c3d design.

My office, Irvine, uses our in house civil program still, but some do use c3d objects but not like complex corridors or tons of c3d labeling/profiles. We use C3D to make surfaces and then export triangles to our format.

[jwilliamsZRQUC]

one thing that definitely helped, working from home, was to set REGENMODE to 0

I tried to find a setting to not sync references upon opening, but never had suceess.

I will say I have a coworker working remote using Starlink in Mexico with our office in Denver and he's able to be much more productive than I was at home in a Denver suburb.  The main difference between our setups was his upload speed was about 200Mbps (symetrical connection) vs. mine limited to about 30 Mbps in Denver.  We use C3D exclusively for surfaces, alignments, networks, etc.

I will admit, today he asked me to open a drawing in the office, to find some info and relay to him because it takes to long for him. so I did a quick video chat and was able to get him info in a couple minutes that would've taken him 20 minutes.

Our contract IT guy has suggested a remote into an office computer might fix some of the issues instead of running C3D locally.  I suspect that might create it's own issues of lag between the remote computer and local(office computer) but it could  be worth a try.  I used to use TeamViewer for other applications to "remote in".

Ironic that all through Covid, AutoDesk never came up with a "best solution" as far as settings or remote to a office computer

[Neilw_05]

We tried using a VPN to work on files remotely but a high upload connection speed at the office end of network is essential for that to work. We have been using remote connections to our workstations instead. That solves all the issues with C3D settings, printers, links to XREF's, DREF's, accessing templates, symbols libraries, etc. since you are actually working in the office. The downside is the screen lag. I don't know what it would take to improve that issue.

[Neilw_05]

One more plus for using remote access: multiple users can connect to a workstation. For example, if you wanted to help a colleague or vice versa, you can connect to their computer and work together directly in the same c3d session. No video conference/screen sharing headaches.

[JamesMaeding]

@Neilw_05 

Arggg, the screen lag.

I totally agree with you on that being a good solution, if not for the lag.

My experience with that has been super frustrating. After 30 years of acad experience, I am issuing commands from the keyboard faster than I could say them out loud.

When you start missing picks from going normal speed, the results are really bad.

I regularly get vendors proclaiming we should go virtual, or remote desktop, and I have them set up a test environment so I can check if the issue is somewhat solved.

It has not, and is not getting better. The best performance I have seen is through Teamviewer (no MS Teams...). Its a higher end screen sharing system. Still too much lag for daily work, though no problem at all for tasks that have some user input, then run for 2 hours like metashape for compiling drone photos to point cloud.

So for those afraid to tell their IT teams the lag is still too much, stand firm. You would not tell rock star guitar players to wear thick gloves so don't do it to your cad operators.

[Hui_LiuB9AB5]

You can open this DWG file with MicroStation, detach all xref files and save DWG file. If this DWG file has data shortcuts, please detach xref from data shortcut source files with MicroStation too.