Good afternoon,
I have a goal of making a standard plant library for our team to pull from. With each plant having predetermined 2D symbols and accompanied color symbols.
It's a big want to have the 2D symbols match exactly the color symbols. That way we can just issue color sheets of our planting plans to help contractors place plants.
I've done some flex testing and have run into to some problems. See below. I read through this article you guys put out and it mostly only covers the PDF being large, the main thing I'm wanting to troubleshoot is the speed of the DWG itself. All of these tests were done with placing ~16,000 plants which is typical for our larger scale projects.
1. Typical Land F/X color symbols
-This is the least desired method but I wanted to test a typical plant 2D plant symbol paired with a color symbol straight from the library. When placing all of the symbols and turning on the presentation mode, it took ~5-10 minutes for all of them to populate. I could actually see them loading in 1 by 1. Plotting takes forever.
2. Custom color symbols
-I previously talked through this process with the support team. I took my typical 2D symbol, pasted it into one of the color symbol files. Purged everything out. Used the color wheel to place a color. Set that layer to LK-XXX-COLR and set it to have a 55 transparency. Symbol looks great! However same problem exists when I place tons of plants the loading times for turning presentation mode on and off are horrid. Plotting takes very long.
3. 2D symbol with hatch layer
-Tried disregarding the color symbol method and just edited the 2D symbol to have a layer with a color hatch. Turning and off using layfrz is quick! So fixes that. However plotting times are still massively long.
The ultimate desire is to have the color symbols that I can set in the plant manager and having plotting times that aren't too long and to be able to toggle them quickly.
Is there a best method here I'm missing? It seems the presentation mode / colored hatch layer may only be a useful tool for small projects. For larger, acres big projects, it seems to buckle under the weight.
Let me know if you'd like me to include some screen captures!
I have a goal of making a standard plant library for our team to pull from. With each plant having predetermined 2D symbols and accompanied color symbols.
It's a big want to have the 2D symbols match exactly the color symbols. That way we can just issue color sheets of our planting plans to help contractors place plants.
I've done some flex testing and have run into to some problems. See below. I read through this article you guys put out and it mostly only covers the PDF being large, the main thing I'm wanting to troubleshoot is the speed of the DWG itself. All of these tests were done with placing ~16,000 plants which is typical for our larger scale projects.
1. Typical Land F/X color symbols
-This is the least desired method but I wanted to test a typical plant 2D plant symbol paired with a color symbol straight from the library. When placing all of the symbols and turning on the presentation mode, it took ~5-10 minutes for all of them to populate. I could actually see them loading in 1 by 1. Plotting takes forever.
2. Custom color symbols
-I previously talked through this process with the support team. I took my typical 2D symbol, pasted it into one of the color symbol files. Purged everything out. Used the color wheel to place a color. Set that layer to LK-XXX-COLR and set it to have a 55 transparency. Symbol looks great! However same problem exists when I place tons of plants the loading times for turning presentation mode on and off are horrid. Plotting takes very long.
3. 2D symbol with hatch layer
-Tried disregarding the color symbol method and just edited the 2D symbol to have a layer with a color hatch. Turning and off using layfrz is quick! So fixes that. However plotting times are still massively long.
The ultimate desire is to have the color symbols that I can set in the plant manager and having plotting times that aren't too long and to be able to toggle them quickly.
Is there a best method here I'm missing? It seems the presentation mode / colored hatch layer may only be a useful tool for small projects. For larger, acres big projects, it seems to buckle under the weight.
Let me know if you'd like me to include some screen captures!
Accepted Answer
I'm not sure what you mean by the 3D element. Do you mean just assigning a plant a color and 3D symbol? No, that does not cause the file to be substantially larger. The only addition is in the name of the of the 3D or color symbol. So say you chose a 20 character file for each, that will add 40 bytes to each of those 16,000 placements, about 625Kb of raw data, which would get compressed when saving the file, maybe adding about 100Kb to what must be a 7Mb file.
--J
--J
Kevin Pfeiffer
selected the reply #5065 as the answer for this post — 1 year ago
Accepted Answer
I'm not sure what you mean by the 3D element. Do you mean just assigning a plant a color and 3D symbol? No, that does not cause the file to be substantially larger. The only addition is in the name of the of the 3D or color symbol. So say you chose a 20 character file for each, that will add 40 bytes to each of those 16,000 placements, about 625Kb of raw data, which would get compressed when saving the file, maybe adding about 100Kb to what must be a 7Mb file.
--J
--J
Sounds good!
Just curious, do having the color symbol + 3D element cause the files to be any larger?
Just curious, do having the color symbol + 3D element cause the files to be any larger?
Not currently. We have discussed adding an X button or a right click action to un-set any of the symbols or photo, but this has not progressed yet.
--J
--J
Jeremiah,
One last question - is there a way to release a color symbol associated with a plant?
I saw in this this post which I believe you mentioned this ability would be added soon? Currently can only change it from one color symbol to another.
Thanks,
Kevin
One last question - is there a way to release a color symbol associated with a plant?
I saw in this this post which I believe you mentioned this ability would be added soon? Currently can only change it from one color symbol to another.
Thanks,
Kevin
No, transparency is not at the hatch level. If you select a gradient, you can see in the hatch ribbon that it's a gradient.
Selecting a hatch with a transparency is just a hatch.
--J
Selecting a hatch with a transparency is just a hatch.
--J
Thanks for the quick response!
Quick question - is a hatch with transparency considered to be a gradient (in AutoCAD's eyes)?
Quick question - is a hatch with transparency considered to be a gradient (in AutoCAD's eyes)?
Kevin,
Our article you reference is extremely quick to note the #1 issue - Gradients. Have you tested 16,000 symbols with just solid color hatches, without gradients?
Overall, given those constraints, you're absolutely right that the symbols themselves should just have a color layer that can be turned on. This is loosely on our radar to add to our symbols, but for the vast majority of our history we have found that firms are quite insistent about using their own symbols. This is why we designed the color render feature as it is, to swap out any client-produced simple block with an illustrative color symbol.
If you find that a drawing with thousands of non-gradient symbols is still taking too long to plot, you could look into other PDF engines. We have found the performance of Acroplot and even PDF995 to be superior to both Adobe and DWG-to-PDF, but it takes experimentation to see what will work best for your needs (and this is also covered in the article that you cite).
Lastly, something that is not covered in that article, is Transparency. I know, it's essential, but it does add a huge degree of complexity and thus processing time to the printing. You could try plotting without transparency to at least see what amount of the performance hit is due to just this setting.
--J
Our article you reference is extremely quick to note the #1 issue - Gradients. Have you tested 16,000 symbols with just solid color hatches, without gradients?
Overall, given those constraints, you're absolutely right that the symbols themselves should just have a color layer that can be turned on. This is loosely on our radar to add to our symbols, but for the vast majority of our history we have found that firms are quite insistent about using their own symbols. This is why we designed the color render feature as it is, to swap out any client-produced simple block with an illustrative color symbol.
If you find that a drawing with thousands of non-gradient symbols is still taking too long to plot, you could look into other PDF engines. We have found the performance of Acroplot and even PDF995 to be superior to both Adobe and DWG-to-PDF, but it takes experimentation to see what will work best for your needs (and this is also covered in the article that you cite).
Lastly, something that is not covered in that article, is Transparency. I know, it's essential, but it does add a huge degree of complexity and thus processing time to the printing. You could try plotting without transparency to at least see what amount of the performance hit is due to just this setting.
--J
Kevin Pfeiffer
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Issue — 1 year ago
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