Hi Alan,
My set up is not as beefed up as yours: I have a Dell Precision 5530 with 32GB of RAM, i9-8950, NVIDIA Quadro P2000 with 4GB of RAM.
I do not argue that TBC will have superior performance with VCL files, just as Civil 3D with DWG and 12d Model with 12daz.
I admit, I have never tried to export large surfaces using LandXML, I will give it a go. So far compressed DWG were my format of choice.
In other packages (non-TBC) it takes 3-5 minutes to import a large ~1GB file. With TBC on my computer, even a lunch break is not enough.
0.5GB 12daz file that effectively is compressed 4.0GB 12da files took whole night to import and was unworkable afterwards. I believe our local Sitech guys are looking into developing improved 12da importer/exporter.
When importing an external format like DWG, converting all data to TBC data types (Linestrings) is a must, otherwise its unworkable.
So what I am trying to get to: TBC is great with its own VCL format, but below average with 3rd party formats. Other packages are great with their own formats, and pretty decent with 3rd party formats.