Topic Title

A surveyor's topo contains many trees as 3d symbols. In order to change the color of the symbol (to match preset line weights), I will explode the 3d symbols to 3d lines, and then convert the 3d lines to 2d lines. This allows me to freely change the colors of the trees to match line weights that correspond to trees marked for removal or to save.

This survey has many trees and deleting and reconfiguring the 3d symbols to 2d lines creates THOUSANDS of entities. This really slows down my go-to-views.

Any ideas or recommendations around this?

Here is a quick video on how I would handle a situation like that.

Youtube's video processing says it's going to take about 40 mins to process so this might look cruddy for a while until they are done doing whatever they do to get it running in HD.

Thanks Josh. This was helpful, especially in redefining trees for removal.

Only trouble is my surveyor's tree symbols are based on diameter size so every tree is a different symbol. I guess DC can't do everything for me

Why not just trade his trees for your trees as symbols?
I had a similar issue years ago back when it took forever to redraft the screen with gazillion lines, it's easy to just turn that tree layer off for your GTV's and during work, then turn on only for print.

Are xrefing the file or editing direct.
I'll put all the trees on one layer, and xref or self xref that layout, highlight the layer to the color of your choice.

Another option is to use a macro
PSymcolors macro that allows you to change colors within an unexploded symbol This allows one to map multiple colors in a symbol without opening it.
https://www.datacad.com/ddn/downloads/PSymColors.zip

One more comment. However if you actually change the symbols and not use the xref method. Save a default file for this surveyor with all edited symbols. Then when you import their file next time, all the symbols will use your colors and not theirs.

Why even stay with his multi-line symbols? Do a symbol swap and substitute the symbol that is 3 non-concentric circles. They're very clean and quick to draw. Just use the 1 symbol and scale it up / down for various sizes.