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#66032 by chunter@vineyard.net
Thu Mar 05, 2015 1:34 pm
when importing details from window manufacturers I find that they often need to be exploded to change color/pen. The exploded drawing often contains thousands and thousands of entities. I then convert the details to symbols and use the unexploded symbols in my data cad 17 drawing. This works great but it seems to cause a massive slow down which is worse if there are xrefs involved. I have purged symbols, turned off nesting and dynamic snapping and am still working at turtle speed - any ideas to make this work better?
thx
CH
#66033 by Roger D
Thu Mar 05, 2015 2:01 pm
Are they a symbol that you explode? In v17 (and prior ver) you can simply edit them using the Symbol editor.
I try to eliminate what is not really neccessary if they do contain >1,000 entitites.
You might try to flatten them to zero height if you don't need 3d, and also maybe move back to be at 0,0 coordinates.
Check the line spacing, back in DOS days, I found if I made my solid lines at a spacing of 5,000 vs. 1, it really speed up the refresh. With the faster video cards today, it's not that important, but every little time saver adds up.
Can you post a link to one of the details from the Manuf. site? Might find another option.
#66034 by chunter@vineyard.net
Thu Mar 05, 2015 2:07 pm
they are not meant to be a symbol but often they end up as polylines and I can't change the color to work with my pen table - when they are exploded to lines I can change color and edit the lines but some of them have 30,000 entities - egad. uploading file here
#66108 by RParker
Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:35 am
Same problem, not sure why manuf's think we need to have the pitch and radius of each screw thread.
I just download the detail, open it in a new file and trace (polylines) over the appropriate lines. Usually no more than 5 minutes each and I cut the size down to about 10 - 15 entities. Do it once and you have a new symbol to use over and over.
#66117 by stephen t.
Tue Mar 17, 2015 4:44 pm
Hello, I had the same problem. I did open the detail up in symbol editor to change the color. It worked fine, but, man, it is time consuming!

I do have another symbol problem though.

I was pasting the details as symbols in my final drawing, things were going well until I got a 'renegade' symbol. When I pasted it on the drawing, it immediately rotated and the the symbol expanded into separate components.

I tried everything I could think of, I made a new symbol out of it and tried to insert it that way, same thing. When i opened a new drawing and tried it there, it worked fine. Any idea as to why this is occurring?

S
#66121 by chunter@vineyard.net
Wed Mar 18, 2015 8:56 am
Clay from data cad support team helped me with this - Thanks Clay!
import the DWG into a new data cad file
go to 3D Menus
Explode
SymExp (by Area).
explode as many times as needed until the message at lower left says 0 entities selected :D
you can then copy the part(s) of the file you need to your drawing file and change it as needed
apparently many of the auto cad files contain symbols (called blocks in auto cad). Often they are nested so you need to "Sym Explode" by area several times until all nested symbols are exploded.
NEVER explode "To Lines" - - - -really bad things happen. :evil:
This worked very well for me and did not take long at all- my 4000 entity window sections turned into 84 entity window sections which I then converted to symbols for use in my wall sections in the usual way.
remember that if you used "bad" symbols in your drawing deleting them is not enough - you must then "Purge unused symbols" (from the symbol browser pulldown menu) to get rid of all the residual bad juju.

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