DWG file conversion

[brentpotts99]

Hello,

There is a particular, weighty (2D) DWG file I'm working with in Fusion. Because of the constraints and whatnot, the file lags terribly. I try to delete portions I'm not using, and it lags for about 10 minutes per item. 

So somebody mentioned cleaning it up in Illustrator first. Great. This seemed to work. However, on re-opening in Fusion, it has now separated each line segment into it's own object, which resulted in hundreds of objects.

I'd share a screenshot, but I don't think it's needed. I'm just wondering 1., if I need to do something addition in Illustrator first (which has hundreds of layers too), or 2., can I just group all the poly-lines in one object layer (within Fusion)? 

Thanks!

[masa.minohara]

HI @brentpotts99,

Thank you for posting in the forum! Honestly I'm not too familiar with Illustrator but this article contains tips on how to improve performance.

Hopefully that helps!

[ToddHarris7556 · Accepted solution]

In general, the cleaner and lighter you can make imported geometry, the easier it will be once you get into Fusion. 

Although we definitely go from Illustrator>Fusion regularly, we usually run through AutoCad first. Illustrator likes to break things into small chunks, as you've found. That just makes it super tedious on a couple of levels -

a) the sheer number of entities bogs down Fusion's sketch engine and makes it slow. We end up connecting/replacing/sketching over entities just to simplify. 

b)  finding open loops can be time-consuming. If Illustrator rounds off to some 4th decimal place and creates a tiny opening, it ends up being 100 zooms in and out, with some high-level construction lines added, to try to pinpoint and fix the problem. 

If it's at ALL possible.... (and it may not be) you may have better luck trying to work with sections of your DWG at a time. Try exporting individual layers. Clean each one up, then import and process individually rather than 15 layers at a time. 

[brentpotts99]

Thanks! Sounds like I'll need to work in smaller steps, which is doable.