Performance Degradation

Recently, while doing some research for a technical support case at Ideate, I came across this article on the Autodesk Knowledge Network (AKN), “Civil 3D Performance Degradation.” Posted back in October, this article provides a fix for performance-based issues occurring across multiple users in an organization.

Per the article, some of the issues addressed are long wait times when opening files, long lags during the PURGE and AUDIT commands, and additional lags with dialog boxes appearing and plotting. The issue affects both AutoCAD and AutoCAD Civil 3D, from the 2014-2017 releases. If you’re encountering any of these issues, I strongly encourage you to check the article out.

The solution is straight forward and involves replacing the existing AECCNETWORK.dbx file with the new one provided by Autodesk.

Here are some additional things to note:

1. You will need Administrative rights for the system to complete the process.
2. Applications must be closed before applying the update.
3. The update needs to be implemented on each user’s machine, at once.
4. The performance problem will recur if an unpatched version of Civil 3D is used to open a file.
5. The performance problem is fixed at the time a drawing file is saved in the updated version of Civil 3D, not when the .dbx file is replaced.
6. The first time a user opens a file, the update will not be evident.
7. Performance will greatly improve after the first save.
8. External references need to be resaved to see the benefit of the update.

Items 3-5 are very important to remember. If the fix is not applied to each user’s machine and an unpatched version of Civil 3D opens the file, the performance problem will recur. With that in mind, I want to reiterate, the fix should be applied to each machine at once, rather than as needed. All files, including XREFs, will also need to be opened and saved before there is a noticeable change in performance.

If you have been running into company-wide performance issues, this very well could be the solution you need.

Thank you for reading. For more information on the software solutions, training, and consulting Ideate provides, visit our website at www.ideateinc.com.

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Matt Miyamoto

ENI Manager & Senior Application Specialist

Matt is an ENI Manager and Senior Application Specialist in Ideate, Inc.’s Seattle office. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and is a licensed Civil Engineer. Prior to joining Ideate, Matt worked as a civil engineer, using Civil 3D on a variety of projects including site development, roadway improvements and infrastructure design. With over 10 years of experience in the civil engineering industry, Matt now provides training, consulting, technical support, and implementation strategies for organizations transitioning to Civil 3D. Matt is an Autodesk Certified Instructor (ACI), as well as an Autodesk Certified BIM Specialist: Roads and Highway Solutions. Additionally, Matt is and Autodesk Certified Professional for AutoCAD, and AutoCAD Civil 3D. He can be found on twitter as @MattM_PE

Tips for Using Current Selection Display within Ideate Explorer

With Ideate Explorer, you can review the information in your Revit model in many different ways. Most users are familiar showing elements within the Entire Project or limiting the elements to only the Active View. 

Did you also know that you can select elements in the Revit canvas first, and then choose the Current Selection option? If Ideate Explorer is not open and you have selected elements in the model, it will default to Current Selection when Ideate Explorer first opens. You can always change the Display setting to Current Selection after selecting elements in the Revit Model. 

Tip: A selection box drawn from left to right will only include those objects completely contained within the selection box. While a selection box drawn from right to left will include any object that overlaps the selection box rectangle. 

This is a great way to see how many elements and what categories have been selected. In my example image below, I can quickly see that the room I selected has 147 Revit elements. I’m only getting the categories and instances for the elements that I have selected in the Revit canvas. 

Read the rest of this valuable Ideate Explorer for Revit workflow and see the video by Richard Taylor on the Ideate Software Blog.

Quickly Discover and Review In-Place Families in Your Revit Project Using Ideate Explorer

In-place families are powerful elements that can be created in the context of the Revit model. However, they come with some performance trade-offs. The following quote is straight from the Revit Help topic:
 
“You can create multiple in-place elements in your projects, and you can place copies of the same in-place element in your projects. Unlike system families and loadable families, however, you cannot duplicate in-place family types to create multiple types.

Although you can transfer or copy in-place elements between projects, you should do so only when necessary, because in-place elements can increase file size and degrade software performance.”

So, how can we use Ideate Explorer to seek out and audit these in-place elements to make sure they are being used properly in our project?

Continue reading this Ideate Software solutions post by Richard Taylor, on the Ideate Software blog.