Selecting Many Points Through the Panorama is Just Too Slow.

[gpserra]

I've been looking for shortcuts when dealing with large amounts of points in a topo, but I've always struggled to do mass point editing. Recently I've found the point list (aka Panorama Vistas) feature, which allows me to select by filtering descriptions, elevations, point numbers and so on. All in all its a pretty cool feature and one which ideally should speed up productivity, how ever its not always the case. When I select up to 50 or so point and click select it's all fine, but when I click on 100, 200, or more points and click select it takes for ever. The funny thing is that I can see all the points being selected in about 5 seconds, but then it just sits there for about 15-30 minutes. 

Is there something I'm doing wrong or is the panorama not really intended to be used in this fashion? 

[BrianHailey]

Hi and welcome to the Civil 3D Forums!

I'm not exactly sure what you are doing but I think a possible alternative is to create point groups of the points you want to edit. Once the points are in the point group, you can right click on the point group in the prospector and choose "Edit Points..." to bring up the point editor.

I think that might help?

[gpserra]

Well...Yes, but to get the points into the correct groups I have to select them by point type first. Lets say I want to place all curb shots (top of curb) in its own group I would first need to select those points (from all_points), then transfer them into the group/layer. The problem arises when I go to select 300 or so points from the all-points edit window (Panorama). For some reason there's zero delay when selecting less then 100 points or so, but when I select more than 200 points the whole system freezes even though I can see the selection took place in seconds. 

[ceethreedee.com]

Yep. I am still yet to work out why selecting say more than 100 points . (as in regular autocad selecting them) is so slow. I though it was because i had the properties palette open. But it appears not.

If you find the reason, please let me know!

[CivilFlow]

Hello friend-

As a follow up to the excellent tip  @BrianHailey had on leveraging Civil 3D Point Groups, I wanted to share a short screencast that hopefully explains visually what he is talking about.  Your comment:

"Well...Yes, but to get the points into the correct groups I have to select them by point type first. Lets say I want to place all curb shots (top of curb) in its own group I would first need to select those points (from all_points), then transfer them into the group/layer".

...is not what he's suggesting.  Thankfully, you don't have to manually select each point to put them into the appropriate Point Group.  He's suggesting Creating a Point Group that matches certain point criteria that you specify.  Meaning if you have "Top of Curb" specified for certain survey points, you can just query those points that have that particular raw description upon Point Group Creation.  This is an extremely quick way to do it and can work in a variety of ways.  Meaning you have lots of options beyond what is presented in this short screencast.

I hope this helps.

[C3D_TomR]

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@ceethreedee.com wrote:

I though it was because i had the properties palette open. But it appears not.

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@ceethreedee.com 

Do you have the quick properties dialog disabled or enabled during the point selection process?  

How to turn off Quick Properties in AutoCAD

Tom Richardson
CAD Manager
Crossing the line with Civil 3D
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If you find an answer to your question, please mark Accept as Solution so others can find it...

[C3D_TomR]

@gpserra 

Which version of Civil 3D are you using?

Are there one or more description keys in the drawing?

Are they survey points or Civil 3D Cogo points?

How were the points added to the drawing?

• (import ASCII into drawing
• import ASCII into survey database
• import fieldbook into survey database
• manually placing points
• some other layout or import process

Test workstation:

• Surface Pro 4
• Intel Core i7-6650U CPU @ 2.20 GHz
• Windows 10 Pro, 64 bit
• 16 GB RAM
• Civil 3D 2018

Results: 

• With QPMODE set to 0 and the properties palette closed, the selection of 1400 points took less than 30 seconds.
• With QPMODE set to 1 and the properties palette closed, the selection of 1400 points took just under 60 seconds.
• With QPMODE set to 0 and the properties palette open, the selection of 1400 points was still running when I ended the process tree after over 35 minutes of waiting for the command to complete.

Tom Richardson
CAD Manager
Crossing the line with Civil 3D
Twitter | LinkedIn


If you find an answer to your question, please mark Accept as Solution so others can find it...

[ceethreedee.com]

@CivilFlow

Probably a much better strategy for putting into point groups, but there are many times you still need to select cogo's from the plan view, particularly if trying to group items by location, or change layers by location.

@C3D_TomR

I have about 3812 points in this drawing attached and takes about 2m10s to select. QPMODE = 0 and no properties palette open. I know its a lot of points, but really its not that many objects. I can select 20000 polylines and it only takes about 10 seconds. Surely something is wrong here that could be easily coded out.