Splitting TW in 2 - graphic part and documentation part

[Anonymous]

I'm a couple of weeks in to a large project (34 000 sqm) and so far it's been fine working in one TW-model. It's an existing building that's being adapted for a new tenant.

So now it's time to start sketching office solutions and adding tons of office furniture and my concern is that working with everything in one TW-file will be difficult .

So my plan is to divide the project in two main TW-files, one for the existing building and one for the new interior / office solutions, and work with module's between them. (This is the plan but any suggestions would be fine).

My question now is if I would gain any performance in daily work if I divided the two main TW-files one more time?
One part that contains The 3D-graphic and
one that only contains Layouts / documentation.

Anyone with experience on this?

[Ed_Brown]

This is a complex question. I am working on a wiki article that will run through many of the options and their advantages and pitfalls, best drawing settings, and registry setting tricks.

Part of the answer also depends on the hardware you have and which version of ArchiCAD. In ArchiCAD 15 more of the data that what would have ended up on disk is kept in memory making it faster. So, if you are working in ArchiCAD 15 and you have a lot of memory (16GB or more) you may find you can keep the project together longer, before reaching that point when things get slow.

The reason you break a project into Model and Layout is mainly because drawings add significant Megabytes to the projects size. The larger the project the longer it takes to share, join, open, update, back up. Larger projects are harder to re-link when you retire a server.

When you do make the decision to break up the file the decisions don’t stop at that point. The two main decisions are whether drawings will be linked from model views or you publish PMKs from your model and the PMKs are linked into the layout.

The option to link the model views has its simplicity, but the speed is definitely with PMKs. I have run some tests with a very large project with relatively small number of drawings (145). I could relink 13 drawings in about 30 minutes when they were links to model view. The same number took me 2-3 minutes when the drawings were PMKs. To publish all the drawings to PMK and update the layout book that referred only to the PMKs took 2 hours. To update the layout book that referred to the model took 2 and ½ hours. I prefer the PMK solution, but it does require a rigor in how you publish and change model view hierarchy.

I will elaborate on this more in the Wiki, but I suggest you trial in a small way the two approaches.

Additionally if you choose the PMK approach I would set the drawings to “Auto” update, and I wouldn’t store the drawings in the layout. With the Layout linked to the Model views you should definitely use “Manual” update and store in the project.

Hope this helps,

[owen]

Lasse,

Single 60,000m2 TW2 MODEL > Publish PMKs > Single TW2 Layout File

Make sure drawings are set to Auto and 'Store In Model' is not checked (makes a huge difference to the file size). Drawing updates are super-fast and the files are quick for teams of 10+ to log in/out/update

You don't need to module anything, but reasonably repetitive elements can be modelled on one floor, Published out as MODs and then linked back in as required

As Ed says give ArchiCAD a decent amount of RAM (16+) and it can handle pretty much any model you can throw at it, its usually the drawing content that slows things down

cheers,

owen

[Mats_Knutsson]

Ed wrote:
This is a complex question. I am working on a wiki article that will run through many of the options and their advantages and pitfalls, best drawing settings, and registry setting tricks.

Dear Ed,

I'm very interested in your coming wiki-article. We're having a teamwork project that is plain syrup, hangs all the time, really hard to work with.

File size pln: 323 MB
No of layouts: 282
RAM: 16GB
HP Z400

Right now I'm testing splitting the project into model/layout and deactivate automatic update for all layouts. I'll also try the publish to pmk way.
I'll also try migrating the project to AC15 just to see what happens.

Cheers,
Mats

[Mats_Knutsson]

View of the garden.

[Anonymous]

Hi

Ed - please post the link to the Wiki article once done, I'd also be interested in reading it.

Lasse - Another suggestion here which no one has mentioned yet is the issue of polygons and polycounts. Especially when adding furniture etc - the AC15 office chair for example has a high number of polygons and placing these all over your model will seriously slow things down.

I had a TW file go over 5Million polygons because it wasn't being monitored properly. After fixing it came down to about 1M and was much more manageable. "Fixing" involves either turning elements off in 3D (in object settings) or turning them to the "simple" option which has a reduced polycount if you need to see the object in 3D.

with the same project I also used the PMK option as well as a moduled option for room data drawings(RDD's). PMK's for plans/sections/elevations & details were published from the master teamwork file, with a second hotlinked TW file used to produce the room data drawings. This was also partially due to HR issues, but was largely motivated by projected file size - there are about 400 rooms in the building, each of which needed a RDD.

hope that helps...

[Mats_Knutsson]

Coffee break...689 drawings to crunch...

[jameshart]

Ed wrote:
This is a complex question. I am working on a wiki article that will run through many of the options and their advantages and pitfalls, best drawing settings, and registry setting tricks.

Hi Ed! Did you finish the wiki article? If so, can you please post the link here?