AutoCADder

If you use AutoCAD 2008, you are probably suffering the same problem - attached xrefs bring in their annotation scale lists and the scale list in the main drawing grows ad infinitum. There can be thousands of nested scales named "XREF_XREF_XREF....".

Such scale lists confuse users (see the SCALELISTEDIT command) and can substantially slow down Open and Xref operations on such infected DWG files. The latest Service Packs for AutoCAD 2008 applications seem to fix the main problem. But what to do with the already affected files? Yes, there is the SCALELISTDEL Reset option or you can use LISP tools like ScaleListDel but still you will have to open the drawings one by one and some of them can open really slooooowly.

The tip Batch remove annotation scale lists may be the cure - the DBXremSL utility does not open the DWG file to fix it - instead, it uses a faster DBX access and modifies all DWG drawing files in a given folder.

The Readme file to DBXremSL mentions a "Safe mode" - I would recommend making this Safe mode the default one so it removes only those scales which were brought-in from Xrefs.

Labels: annotation scale, AutoCAD 2008, batch, DBX, DWG, Xref

Not only AutoCAD 2008 or 2009, but still more CAD applications are released in the native 64-bit versions. This brings - first of all - much bigger directly addressable memory (RAM). So you can process much larger datasets without being slowed down by OS memory limits.

As you probably know, applications running in the 32-bit Windows versions can address only 2GB (3GB in special modes) of mmory. Native 64-bit applications running in the 64-bit versions of Windows can access much more physical memory (of course if you have enough RAM installed). How much more? This is an important question if you are planning new workstations which should last for the next few years.

It seems to be enough for many years to the future. If you pick the right version of your operating system, you'll probably never hit this limit:

• Windows XP x64: 128 GB
• Vista Home Basic 64-bit: 8 GB
• Vista Home Premium 64-bit: 16 GB
• Vista Business/Ultimate/Enterprise 64-bit: 128GB

I don't assume you will run AutoCAD or Inventor on a "Home" Vista.

So for your next workstation, plan 4 or 8 GB of RAM by default.

Labels: 64-bit, RAM, Vista

Interesting - the DUMPMEMALLOC command can set CPU affinity for AutoCAD 2008. I have only a dualcore system to try it on but it seems to really work. The Task manager graph goes from parallel performance load to the left core (#0) load only.

Read on CAD Forum - I recommend subscribing to their RSS feed.

Searching for the german translation of an AutoCAD command I have found a very nice online resource of AutoCAD command names. This dictionary seems to contain all AutoCAD commands including Express Tools, in English, German, Italian, French and other languages.

The command list is hidden on the CAD Forum web, in its Tips section - AutoCAD commands. The command lookup resembles the CommandComplete tool in AutoCAD but this one works online - just type in some characters from the searched command and it dynamically lists all commands containing these characters while you type. The information about a particular command then includes its translation to other languages, eg. what is its German equivalent, the AutoCAD version it was first introduced and a short description. Alas this description seems to be missing on some commands.

I am used to work with the original English versions of AutoCAD commands but many of my collegues want to know command names for the German version of AutoCAD. So this page will definitely keep one of the top positions in my bookmark list.

Labels: AutoCAD, commands, language, translation