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Issues cleaning up big files!

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 1:30 pm
by Clive
For me I get a lot of files from students for laser cutting, but first they need to be cleaned up. The attached file contains blocks and duplicates and cleaning this up in QCAD can take an absolute age, it can be done but it takes quite a while. For the everyday file created with QCAD there are little problems I must say...but when I get files like this that are created with other CAD programs, they do take some cleaning up.

@Andrew, is there a way of speeding up this process in QCAD? or maybe extra development is required to handle this type of big file?
Be prepared the file is very busy!
1.100 plan.dwg
(7.62 MiB) Downloaded 432 times

Re: Issues cleaning up big files!

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:28 pm
by andrew
Thanks for posting the file, Clive.

Are the existing clean up tools too slow or do you need more / other tools than what is available?

The tools that are typically used for cleaning up drawings at the moment are:
- Block - Purge Unused Blocks
- Layer - Purge Unused Layers
- Modify - Detect Duplicates
- Modify - Detect Zero-Length Entities

Re: Issues cleaning up big files!

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:42 pm
by Clive
Thanks Andrew.
Well in files like this I find that sometimes it takes a long time even to open the file and select everything in the first place. After that it seems to struggle and at times - too slow,yes.

Typically with a file like this I would:

1.Select all.
2.Explode Blocks - in order to change the line weights to make them readable to the laser cutters.
3.Detect and delete duplicates.

Re: Issues cleaning up big files!

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 3:58 pm
by andrew
Thanks, I understand. I'm always looking at ways to improve performance but that is not the top priority as the vast majority of QCAD users operate with files with far less than 10'000 entities.

A tip of the top of my head:
- open the file, purge all unused blocks and layers
- save the file under a new name
- close and re-open the file

Doing this before anything else can speed things up, especially if there are many unused blocks with many entities in them.

Re: Issues cleaning up big files!

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 4:02 pm
by Clive
Yes I understand, as I say I'm only faced with this sometimes - thank goodness :roll:

Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out, if it helps a little , its better than nothing.