Below are a few tips to help you clean and speed up your Civil 3D drawings if you find they’re running slower than usual.
RECOVER the drawing
The RECOVER command will extract as much data as it can from the drawing, repairs and opens the damaged drawing. Click the link below for a short video demonstrating the RECOVER command.
What to do when your surface references a file that cannot be found.
You can export the current surface data to LandXML format then re-import it and overwrite the current surface. This will remove any references to the external file that cannot be found. Click the link below for a short video demonstrating the LandXML export/import function. Skip ahead to about the 30-second mark of the video.
PURGE the drawing
This one should be a no-brainer but it’s usually the simple things that often get overlooked. Click the link below for a short video demonstrating the PURGE command.
PURGE also has a command line version that does slightly more when it comes to cleaning up a drawing so it’s a good idea to run this whenever you run the dialog box version. Click the link below for a short video demonstrating the –PURGE command.
Set the drawing’s coordinate system
This one isn’t so much about speeding up drawings but more about making sure your drawing is geo-located correctly. A drawing that is not geo-located correctly will be a problem if/when you try to connect it to an InfraWorks 360 model or import GIS data. Click the link below for a short video demonstrating how to set the drawing’s coordinate system.
WBLOCK the contents of the drawing to a new file
This is a great way of troubleshooting problem drawings. You simply specify which objects you want to save to a new drawing (or the entire drawing itself), where the file is to be located and that’s about it. The great thing about the WBLOCK command is that you lose a lot of settings and system variables for the drawing which makes it a little bit easier to trouble-shoot. Click the link below for a short video demonstrating the WBLOCK command.
Close the Layer Properties palette
The Layer Properties palette is constantly monitoring the status of layers in the active drawing so if you notice your drawing running a bit slower or opening a drawing is slow, close – do not minimize – the Layer Properties palette. Another option would be to use the CLASSICLAYER command.
NOTE: You’ll want to do most, if not ALL of these, to the drawings in your project, including xrefs.
The BIM Avenger's Blog 