A post in the discussion group today got me thinking about something I do and take for granted. He was complaining, rightfully so, about how slow corridors are in the object viewer. Read on to find out a way to improve your performance.
The performance of the Object Viewer seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of data you’re trying to view. Corridors have a ton of information in them typically.
- You have corridor sections every X feet or metres; the more you have, the slower it will be.
- Each corridor section has a ton of information as well. Just think of a LaneOutsideSuper.
13 links
10 markers
4 shapes
That’s 27 objects…and that’s just a single subassembly. A typical urban road may have over 120 pieces that make up EVERY corridor section.
We may need all of that when we create our assembly, but we don’t need to display all that info inside our corridor. Really, we just need the Top.
Show All (122 objects)
Show Top Only (8 objects)
A savings of 114 objects per corridor section. a 93% reduction in objects. Even the most jaded techie can appreciate that.
How do we do this? Easy…the dreaded Code Set Styles.
To make a long story short, here is an image of my code set style. Notice that the styles for EVERYTHING except Top links are turned off.
Apply this to your corridor in the corridor properties and go to town in the object viewer
Just to make sure you’re not missing anything. When you are creating those “No Markers” type of styles make sure you turn off the Links, Markers, or Shapes in both the 2D view and the 3D view. If you forget the 3D view then, well, you’ve done a lot of work for nothing.
There is even more you can do to help yourself. Turn off all those pesky corridor feature lines that you really don’t need…like all those that lie underground. You’ll find a Feature Lines tab in corridor properties.
Good luck and thanks for watching.
Matt
I apologize for not having that Read More link. I appear to be clogging the main page up. Somebody please show me the way.
Matt
use live writer, it’s built in 😉
Wow, object viewer is usable again! Thanks for the great tip.
Thanks for the post! Getting the viewer performance back will be awesome….
Good TIP! 🙂
great tip, can’t wait to try it!
Thanks for all the nice feedback. I have to be honest here. I have to post this before anyone counts and posts hate mail.
If you count, there are actually 8 items…per side. Apparently I hadn’t had my Wheaties that day when I said 8 total.
Matt
One thing to remember. Unlike modifying the code set styles to none, which still generates the data, if you unselect a featureline from the featureline tab then it will not be generated when the corridor is built. So, if you turn off a featureline that is used in generating a surface from the corridor then that surface will not build properly because the featureline used is not generated during the build of the corridor.
Great tip! This is a great speed boost during desing.
My assembly has all but disappeared after making these modifications. The only thing that remains is the baseline of the assembly. The subasseblies are still listed in the properties and the corridor builds correctly but the assembly is now all gone except for the baseline. Any thoughts? I did notice an immediate change in performance (for the good, obviously). Thanks.
GBS