Large (100M) CAD File

[unicoletti]

I am trying to convert some layers (about 10) of a large CAD file (100M) to shapefile with cad2shp.
What happens is that cad2shape v3.0 (which I bought today) eats up all available memory and forces me to kill the process before the system gets unusable.

I could try to split the CAD file in smaller bits, but I'd prefer not to do that if possible.

Thanks,
Umberto

[GuthCAD Software Support]

Hello Umberto,

If possible please make the file temporarily available to us so that we can analyse why the memory is being used up.

Otherwise, you should not need to physically split the CAD file, but you could select to translate say half the Layers at a time (or even less if it is still a problem) using the CAD2Shape 'Layers' filter. There is also an option to translate each Layer to a separate shapefile. In theory at least this should cut down on the memory requirement.

Again though, we would like to know the what is causing the problem, and if you are able to make the file available for us to test it would be useful. (I know that it is not always possible due to confidentiality issues, certainly all data is treated by us as strictly confidential.)

best regards,
Software Support

[unicoletti]

Tomorrow I will try to clean up the file (File->Utilities) and the size will hopefully drop down a bit. I'll update this thread with the result afterwards.

BTW: I have already tried to export 5 layers at the time, but without luck...

Thanks,
Umberto

[unicoletti]

I have cleaned up the file and it dropped to 48MB (!). Apparently there were a lot of unused blocks...

I can now successfully run cad2shape, even though memory usage is still impressive. I attach an image of how memory usage goes on my XP Pro SP2 768MB RAM system when running cad2shape against the 48MB file.

I think I can provide the CAD file if you still want to take a look at it. Contact me privately for that.