Large Surface - Making working very slow

[riza3430]

Hi all

As the title says really, I'm having issues on working on a new job which is far bigger than anything we have done in the past. The problem is that I am creating a surface within my drawing, adding all of the point files as a XYZ format (of which there are 17 of them) but it's making my machine run super slow when trying to do most things. I believe there is about 2.5-3 million points within the surface after I've created it, of which I do need all of them as we are creating multiple alignments for a pipe route depending on the ground profile. The overall file ends up making a .mms file which is currently at 77mb.

Should I be creating a data shortcut for my surface or is this just something I'd have to live with and work slowly on? I haven't got any experiences with working with data shortcuts as I usually just add the surface data straight into my drawing.

Any help or advice much welcomed

[remi678731]

Hi
had a similar situation a couple years ago. 1 I don't like data shortcuts (remember if you send the dwg to someone else the data shortcut doesn't go you have to send it too) 2 the FG surface had to be sent to a surveyor for machine the complete surface was to large to load in his staking program. I saved the dwg with the completed surface )in my case into 3 dwg) with overlapping sections then completed the job

[BlackBox]

Problem with small Civil 3D shops - as I found out leaving a large international firm for a small shop a few years back - is that, as a generalization, they're accustom to dumping everything into one, or a very few drawings. That works fine for small sites, but isn't scaleable as a template for large projects, as you've discovered.

Pulling from the best of both of my own employer scale/scopes, YMMV - I'd create your surfaces in their own, individual drawings, and DREF them into your production drawings. If labeling, displaying contours in the larger view sheets (i.e., master utility plan, existing conditions, etc.) then consider adding a DREF, labeling it for that particular (or multiple) large view scales, do an Export to AutoCAD on that (keeping your C3D drawing), and XREF/Insert the resultant 'dumb' drawing to speed the production drawing up.

Civil 3D isn't perfect, but using it well seems to be a constant exercise in knowing when to use the right tool for the job, in order to meet your own employer's needs - sometimes a polyline, blocks and some math is actually better than alignments, profiles, corridors, surfaces, and volumes dashboard.


... My $0.02



[Edit] - FWIW, I learned this back when learning how the new small shop 'did thangs', and ended up with a +200 MB drawing - talk about _slow_?! Haha

[Iceberg]

Why not try breaking up the surface into sections, maybe by sheet layout. This way you can turn on one surface at a time while you are working and have the rest of the surface off.

[Ian Philpott]

Is it a large site or just a dense dataset. Could the number of points be reduced without adversely affecting the accuracy?