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TBC Importing Large Cad File

  • 1.  TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-15-2020 10:07

    Hello, I have a large project and the cad file I'm importing is 345mb. Haven't seen the needle move much in 30 min. Anyone have experience with a file that big? Running the latest TBC Version.

     

    Thanks, Tom



  • 2.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-15-2020 12:27

    Hard to tell Tom - I haven't seen that personally, however if it is a DXF file (non binary) then it is not compressed at all so likely not unmanageable, if a DWG (Compressed) then it could be many times that size uncompressed. It also depends on what is in the file as maybe it got to a point and has stalled - hard to tell without the file to look at and getting a developer to look at what is happening. I can take a look in AutoCAD if you want to share the file with me, not much I can do without the data.

     

    Alan 



  • 3.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-15-2020 17:05

    Same here.

     

    DWG / DXF / 12da files... if it exceeds 100MB I know before hand that I have to chop it into smaller pieces...



  • 4.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-15-2020 17:52

    Please send one over for me to look at

     

    Alan



  • 5.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-15-2020 18:18
      |   view attached

    Thanks Alan for looking into that.

     

    I have sent you a link thru my OneDrive. Please let me know if it doesn’t work. It’s 250MB of DWG and 500MB of 12daz.

    At the moment my OneDrive status is “Sync Pending”.

     

    Regards,

     

    Marian Plucinski

    Project Survey Manager

    Cairns Southern Access Corridor Stage 3: Edmonton to Gordonvale Project

    P +61 436 284 378 | E Marian.Plucinski@seymourwhyte.com.au<mailto:Marian.Plucinski@seymourwhyte.com.au>

    A HQ Level 8, 540 Wickham St | Fortitude Valley Queensland  4006

     

     

     

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  • 6.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-15-2020 18:45

    Will likely take a look at tgis on Thurdsay

     

    On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 7:18 PM marian.plucinski@seymourwhyte.com.au <



  • 7.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-16-2020 08:13

    Thanks for the response. I will be interested to see what Alan finds out also.

    The drawing I was having a problem with had a separate .dwg file for each plan page on a on square mile project. Each page contained a block for that page with external reverences and ALL the other pages are in the same format. TBC with my computer anyways couldn't import it. I ended up deleting all the other page blocks on by one in autocad till I was left with the one we needed. I went from 345mb to 20mb after deleting all the other sheets.

     

    I'm good to go now but wish I had that wasted time back. If we had more time I would have requested a Base file with what we needed specifically....

     

    Tom



  • 8.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-16-2020 14:25

    So Marian provided me with a DWG file that was 265MB to look at. It imported OK at the end of a long period - so it was by no means fast to import and open. The file had 5.6 million 3D faces in it and was a little sluggish at the end of importing on my laptop. I made a surface out of it and then Exploded the surface to create a de-duplicated set of lines and then deleted the original lines, and then it became more manageable. 

     

    The file if it had been written as a LandXML would have been a lot more efficient I think to start with. 

     

    But TBC does finish if you give it the time to do so - you would not have to open it in AutoCAD and do anything with it there before using it in TBC, at least not on a laptop with the spec that I have (which is decent but not totally outlandish. I have 64GB RAM and 8GB Graphics Card and an I9 top of the range Dell Precision 17" laptop.

     

    I opened the same DWG in AutoCAD and while it threw some GPU errors it did load its own native format file a lot faster than TBC did, and it was a little easier o work with in AutoCAD, however you would expect that with its own native format data. That is like loading a VCL file into TBC which I tried next to see how that performed on my adjusted dataset.

     

    The Exploding of the surface and de-duplication etc. took a while so not sure how useful a process that would really be on this size of dataset.



  • 9.  Re: TBC Importing Large Cad File

    Posted 06-16-2020 15:09

    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.