Imported drawings killing my 3dsmax speed

[stayinwonderland]

Whenever I import autocad drawings into max, whenever I make the layer they're on visible, things go really slow. Is this normal?

 

I've just imported some plans for a large apartment and just the elevations alone are crippling it.

 

EDIT: they're not complex at all.

[Guest calumreid]

Do you have a copy of Autocad? If so then learning to clean up clients cad drawings is invaluable. Strip out everything that isn't necessary, hatches, text, dimensions etc. Make use of the Purge and Overkill commands in Autocad, they can strip a ton of 'bloatware' from the file, especially if its messy. But print off the original drawings or keep them open to reference to while modelling, just in case you delete key information during the cleanup and miss it out in max.

[stayinwonderland]

I think I figured out why this one is so slow. So the apartment has a ton of window boxes that have a few round shapes in them. These circular shapes contain LOADS of points rather than, say, bezier curves. The whole thing is riddled with vertices. Even straight lines!

 

Wonder what the best thing to do there is. Probably just go around and delete all the window boxes. Bit tiresome. His cad files (yes I do have autocad) are messy and I hate to work in autocad as it makes no sense. But it might be worth it in this case. I have to google every bloody click and action coz it's not intuitive at all.

[Guest calumreid]

Ah yeah iv had that before, had it where it was just a straight line, no curve or anything, but had like 100's of thousands of verts! Maybe millions i cant remember. Yeah either delete them in max or in cad. Yeah having to clean up clients cad can be annoying, especially if your not used to autocad! But even if you cant be bothered stripping out loads of stuff you can do a purge and overkill in 10 seconds, depending on the drawing in can help immensely. (just type 'purge' and 'overkill' in the command bar at the bottom, tick everything in the dialogue box's and it will do the rest!)

[stayinwonderland]

Thanks for the tips. I did a purge but not sure if that did anything noticeable?

 

But man it's like someone invented a piece of software to drive me insane! I have about 10 layers where I can delete things in it, and I can isolate that layer, but in doing so, can't select things on that layer. So I can't just drag a bit rectangle over it and delete all the furniture/extraneous details. Needs to be a force-delete button for layers.

 

EDIT: ah, actually I found that if I hide other layers, rather than lock them, then I can delete the stuff that's on those layers.

Edited October 25, 2013 by stayinwonderland

[Guest calumreid]

No problem. Yeah you wont actually see Purge delete stuff, it cleans up stuff 'behind the scenes', like empty layers, nested items and a load of other stuff i cant remember, i just know cleans it up haha Overkill will delete any overlapping lines, duplicates etc

[Jose Negrete]

somewhat related:

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/dwg-cleanup

 

the high amount of verts sounds odd... is it possible the dwg was originally created in another software and exported to dwg?

[RyderSK]

In cases of very ugly CAD I don't loose time cleaning it up in AutoCAD but instead export as .PDF, import into PS to one big jpeg, import that as a plane and just model on top. Not so precise, but 3D is hardly precise anyway.

[stayinwonderland]

somewhat related:

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/dwg-cleanup

 

the high amount of verts sounds odd... is it possible the dwg was originally created in another software and exported to dwg?

 

Nah, it's totally clean and fine in autocad. Something going on during the import process methinks.

 

 

 

 

In cases of very ugly CAD I don't loose time cleaning it up in AutoCAD but instead export as .PDF, import into PS to one big jpeg, import that as a plane and just model on top. Not so precise, but 3D is hardly precise anyway.

 

Really, you do that? I will do that for a very very basic model but snapping to those verts is soooo handy.

[stuartkemp]

Maybe try detaching the circles to a desperate object and apply the optimise spline modifier. It has worked for me in the past (although with ellipses, never had this issue with circles).

 

Sent from my C5503 using Tapatalk

[stuartkemp]

Maybe try detaching the circles to a separate object and apply the optimise spline modifier. It has worked for me in the past (although with ellipses, never had this issue with circles).

 

Sent from my C5503 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

Sent from my C5503 using Tapatalk

[stayinwonderland]

I'm ok to just delete those. They're not structural so not integral to my tracing.

 

But overall, lesson learned - if your dwg file imports and slows down max, zoom right in and check out the verts. If there's too many then consider if they're essential and delete them in autocad before importing. If they are essential, I don't know how you'd manage.

[Nic H]

yep i dont use DWG either - unless its very simple on for site stuff.

a jpg suffices as max is really awful with linework

[jsf]

Try taking one of your cleaned up files and linking it instead of importing it, you may find less of a slow down.

File > References > Manage Links > Attach.

If you really want the linework in your model space you can Bind it. Manage links also allows you to Reload or Detach your DWG file.

I typically use this method and detach the file when I'm done with it.

[CliveG]

I'm with Jay, link file, trace what I need then detach, clean and simple yet you can stll snap onto points accurately. Prevents all of that tedious cleaning up of residual junk too.

 

I believe the Manage Links - attach method offers you configuration options which along with native Autocad settings like facetres may even allow you to get your curves exporting without the gazillion vertices, but I've never really bothered as I think MAX is happier with it's own line work ultimately.