Removing Redundant Lines? (to reduce file size)

[Anonymous]

I have modeled my exterior elevations using shadows and materials hatching - then turn them into "Drawings" to clean up. The problem is that with shadows and materials hatching , the drawings have many redundant lines and REALLY slow down as well as create VERY large AC and Plotmaker files..

Is there anyway to remove redundat lines/ reduce file size?
(probably and very confusing question)..

Thanks in advance.

[Link]

In AC11 look into the Line/Fill Consolidation in your Edit>Reshape menu.

In AC9 use the Check Duplicates menu from the Tools menu.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

AC 9 Tools - Check Duplicates?

Maybe I have drank WAY too much coffee today, but I do not seem to find Check Duplicates command in any of my tool bars..

Help...

[Link]

It's been a while since I've used 9, but you'll probably need to load the Check Duplicates add-on, via the Add-on Manager. From memory you load it from the Goodies folder.

Cheers,
Link.

[Anonymous]

Thanks...found it!
Unfortunatly, there were not as many redundant lines as I was hoping for. My elevation drawings are still WAY to large.

Thanks anyway..

[Aussie John]

josh wrote:
Thanks...found it!
Unfortunatly, there were not as many redundant lines as I was hoping for. My elevation drawings are still WAY to large.

Thanks anyway..

You could try a different fill for your shadows or edit the fill to increase the spacing of the lines

[Thomas Holm]

"josh carter" then turn them into "Drawings" to clean up[/quote wrote:

I'm not sure, but I have a feeling the problem lies in the above. How do you "turn them into drawings"?

[Anonymous]

I model the elevations (auto-rebuild) with shadows and material hatching, then go into Section Settings and then turn them fron auto-rebuild into Drawings.

Is this not the way to go??
sometimes, I just miss my leadholder and 2H lead....

[Thomas Holm]

Not sure.

I wouldn't do that, just turn off auto-rebuild if that was what I wanted, but I may not remember the AC9 process correctly.

My line of thought was that maybe you in the "make drawings" process unwillingly exploded your fills and hatches patterns into individual graphic entities (lines etc). This would increase file size enormously if you have lots of those patterns.

Maybe you could check the Help files to see that you follow exactly the standard procedures for creating pmks etc for Plotmaker.
I'm no expert, I used to print to pdf and mount those in Indesign those days, just to avoid Plotmaker.

If nothing else helps, I'd recommend upgrading to AC11 and skip the "make drawings" step completely. The AC10-11 Save View, place on Layout, and Publish process completely avoids this issue (at least until Print time), since everything is links and no graphics are unlinked or dupilcated.

I also try to limit the use of irregular patterns. I find using solid fills with different grey pens can carry the same amount of information, yet give just a fraction of the size of pdfs etc.

But perhaps someone else has better advice.