Troubleshooting Poor Performance in Large CAD Files in Autodesk Software

[emmanuelkatto01]

Hello Autodesk Community, I am Emmanuel Katto. I’ve been working on a significant project in AutoCAD (or Revit, Inventor, etc.), and I’m encountering performance issues when navigating and editing my large CAD files. It’s becoming increasingly challenging to maintain a smooth workflow. I would greatly appreciate any advice or tips to resolve these issues:

How do you use layers and blocks effectively to enhance performance? Are there best practices for organizing these elements to avoid clutter and facilitate smoother operations?

What are the most common causes of slow performance when working with large CAD files in Autodesk software? Are there particular settings or configurations I should be aware of?

Thanks!

Emmanuel Katto

[JDB423]

I'd recommend running the purge, audit and overkill commands if you haven't already.

PURGE will let you remove any unused or unwanted layers/blocks from the drawing. If you have created the drawing using a template it will bring in all of the layers and blocks that have been set up within the template, you really only want the ones you need.

AUDIT will scan your drawing and identify errors within the file, it will also ask if you want to fix any errors that are found.

OVERKILL will delete any duplicate or overlapping information within the drawing.

Typically, running these 3 commands helps me reduce my file size on any drawings/models that I am working on, thus increasing the performance.

[CahaLF7RX]

Hello,

best practice . . . . 

at my current employer - we have two main file types:  2D and 3D

2D files are just that, two dimensional; lines, arcs, these are your xref files.

3D files have elevations- surfaces, pipe networks, vertical alignments, corridors, and these are for data shortcuts.

do not short cut anything into a 2d drawing,

watch the type of xref - overlay or attached.

(overlay just shows in the drawing it is xref into, and attached will show in other drawings when the original file is xref)

use standard layer names and try to keep the layers to a minimum in each file.

and audit and purge as needed 

best of luck,

nonbeard13

[CahaLF7RX]

and the item that slows cad down a whole lot is:

having everything in one drawing.

for a single family home that can work.

but subdivisions, commercial sites, apartments/condos, highways - 

these need multiple drawings - the 2D and 3D types

good luck,

nonbeard13

[brian.strandberg]

Alot of these suggestions have been very good.  I find with large projects using an effective strategy for managing the data load on the project can make things much faster.

Some of the suggestions in the Civil 3d best practices are very good for working with large projects.  https://help.autodesk.com/view/CIV3D/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-394E4463-964C-4233-BC27-5ECB5B03E4E3 

#1 thing that will help is don't xref more than 10 profiles on your project (8 is better).  Data shortcut the profile data and create the profile view in your sheet drawing.  You can have a drawing with all your profiles and profile views to do your design, but xrefing this is a bad idea.

[CahaLF7RX]

another item - 

limit the number of viewports in a drawing.

I would suggest less than 10 (if possible), yes this may add drawings to the set,

but anymore and the time lag starts to add up fast.

and yes, xref the profiles is also a great ideal.

good luck,

nonbeard13

[brian.strandberg]

I would also agree with that.  It needs to regenerate a Civil 3d label twice for each viewport.  So you can see how multiplication can get out of hand fast with a ton of viewports.