This is kind of an add-on to Josh’s post about Xref, Dref and Plotting. I just think it is such an important concept that I still see the people just starting out in C3D struggling with.
Here’s the gist. In order for all the dynamic ability for C3D to work all that data has to be readily available at the nano-second request for it. So all that unbelievable amount of data is stored in the drawing. Wow great! Well Yes and No. See why after the jump.
Just to make my point to my users I spent about two hours one day browsing our server. I would open the LDT project directories and highlight all those LDT folders (DTM, Cogo,…. No dwg!) and list them to see the size of them.
What I found was they ranged per project directory from 1 mb to 650 mb. And there is the kicker. Do you want 650 mb of design data in your drawing? That’s not even linework!
So we are forced to break the design data into pieces. Autodesk gives one way or suggestion here. I thought three levels was a bit overkill. But as Josh said you can now see why using this method your setup and templates are key to keeping everybody sane. It’s looks like a lot but one user told me “I don’t care how many drawings he had to deal with as long as they opened and did what they were supposed to do”.
Let me know what systems of dealing with this you’ve come up with.
