problems with polyline

[Lakeside-E]

Hey, In short, is there a way to reduce the impact that a polyline is having on my system. Let me splain. I am needing to model the duralife screen panel "sprig"... easy enough. small panel aproximately 2'x4' but I am about half way through now and clicking on the main polyline with holes is bringing Chief to a crawl. 

 

I started the process by using splines to trace the shapes then converting them to polylines but i suspect this method has the effect of creating too many lines when fewer is sufficient for my purposes. Is there a way to adjust "resolution" to something that is manageable without starting from zero? If not is there a better way to create this that wont freeze chief in time? 

 

Note, other programs open and operate fine while Chief is in this state. 

[Alaskan_Son]

One thing that can make a HUGE difference is Temporary Dimensions.  Try turning those off before starting over or going back to modify the cutouts.

[Lakeside-E]

1 minute ago, solver said:

 

What does this look like?

https://duralifedecking.com/composite-decking/accessories/panels/ scroll about midway down and you will see the panel designs. I already created the fretwork, boardwalk, and celtic designs but the sprig is being a pain. 

 

37 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

One thing that can make a HUGE difference is Temporary Dimensions.  Try turning those off before starting over or going back to modify the cutouts.

I tried this but it is still slower than my prized race snail...

 

 

[Lakeside-E]

Here is the file i am working with

 

Duralife Screen Panels - Sprig.plan

[DzinEye]

16 minutes ago, Lakeside-E said:

https://duralifedecking.com/composite-decking/accessories/panels/ scroll about midway down and you will see the panel designs. I already created the fretwork, boardwalk, and celtic designs but the sprig is being a pain. 

 

I tried this but it is still slower than my prized race snail...

 

 

     If you can't find a workable solution, you might consider trying using a 'window' with custom muntins.   

[Lakeside-E]

3 hours ago, DzinEye said:

     If you can't find a workable solution, you might consider trying using a 'window' with custom muntins.   

windows have to be inserted into walls, these do not. you show me that you can make muttons accurate to the fretwork, celtic, sprig, or morse pattern... I dont know how you could begin that process.

 

[DzinEye]

1 hour ago, Lakeside-E said:

windows have to be inserted into walls, these do not. you show me that you can make muttons accurate to the fretwork, celtic, sprig, or morse pattern... I dont know how you could begin that process.

 

Ya, I can see that the Sprig design would be impossible with muntins.   It was just a thought when I saw one of the other designs was comprised of 'lines' of the same width.  I opened your plan and was working in it without any problems, and then I clicked on the outer frame and that brought my computer to it's knees.  I didn't want to play anymore after that, but I have to believe there's a better way.  You might try using arcs.  

[Lakeside-E]

47 minutes ago, DzinEye said:

Ya, I can see that the Sprig design would be impossible with muntins.   It was just a thought when I saw one of the other designs was comprised of 'lines' of the same width.  I opened your plan and was working in it without any problems, and then I clicked on the outer frame and that brought my computer to it's knees.  I didn't want to play anymore after that, but I have to believe there's a better way.  You might try using arcs.  

Thanks for trying, at least it wasn't just mine... I can see our computer stats are similar so maybe someone with a heftier computer than us can give it a go. Didnt imagine that a non solid box with holes would be such a gauntlet.

[glennw]

I had a really quick go by doing a screen capture of the panel - which is very poor resolution.

If you can get a better resolution image, this way may work a lot better.

Take a screen shot, or get a copy of the screen image in .png format.

Build Image>Create Billboard Image>enter the path to the image and make any changes>Transparency panel>Use Custom Transparency Color>select the color assigned to the spaces.

This may be good enough...or, maybe not - I think it should depend on the resolution of the original image and what you want to use it for.

 

[Chopsaw]

1 hour ago, Lakeside-E said:

so maybe someone with a heftier computer than us can give it a go.

 

It might be interesting to see what tech support has to say about that situation.

[glennw]

Ah,

I see that after opening your plan, you already have a .png of the screen.

But it was not included with the plan.

You need to include the pic with the plan.

 

The problem with the slow down is caused by the number (and maybe shape) of the holes.

I deleted the holes one at a time then replaced them one at a time with Undo.

Between each undo, I selected the containing polyline - not the Picture Box.

Things were OK for the first 3-4 Undo's and then with each progressive Undo things slowed down more and more - the deletions were ok, it just took longer and longer for the containing polyline to get selected..

Maybe send it to tech support and ask them why?

[Lakeside-E]

10 hours ago, glennw said:

I had a really quick go by doing a screen capture of the panel - which is very poor resolution.

If you can get a better resolution image, this way may work a lot better.

Take a screen shot, or get a copy of the screen image in .png format.

Build Image>Create Billboard Image>enter the path to the image and make any changes>Transparency panel>Use Custom Transparency Color>select the color assigned to the spaces.

This may be good enough...or, maybe not - I think it should depend on the resolution of the original image and what you want to use it for.

 

Interesting approach to handle it... I never considered this but i'm sure alot less impactful overall, Thanks.

 

9 hours ago, Chopsaw said:

 

It might be interesting to see what tech support has to say about that situation.

 

7 hours ago, glennw said:

Maybe send it to tech support and ask them why?

 

I'll have to do this. I wanted to make sure there wasnt something simple I was overlooking. In this case, splines are the easiest CAD tool for modeling the shapes I know of but it seems there should be a easy way to lessen the tool they take on a system  after a general line is established. when converting a curve to a polyline you have the option to choose the number of sides. Seems that any poly-object should be able to be selected after creation and adjusted for resolution. Well see what Tech support comes up with and maybe this will turn into a suggestion.

[BenMerritt]

11 hours ago, Lakeside-E said:

I'll have to do this. I wanted to make sure there wasnt something simple I was overlooking. In this case, splines are the easiest CAD tool for modeling the shapes I know of but it seems there should be a easy way to lessen the tool they take on a system  after a general line is established. when converting a curve to a polyline you have the option to choose the number of sides. Seems that any poly-object should be able to be selected after creation and adjusted for resolution. Well see what Tech support comes up with and maybe this will turn into a suggestion.

For splines, you can do this with the "New Segment Angle" option:


I suspect that I may know what's causing the slowdown in this case, although I can't confirm that with certainty at the moment. You may be able to work around the issue by marquee-selecting the spline instead of doing a single click. If you do end up submitting this to tech support, feel free to suggest that they send it my way so I can at least make some notes on it; that may make it easier for us to triage the issue.

[Alaskan_Son]

1 hour ago, BenMerritt said:

For splines, you can do this with the "New Segment Angle" option:


I suspect that I may know what's causing the slowdown in this case, although I can't confirm that with certainty at the moment. You may be able to work around the issue by marquee-selecting the spline instead of doing a single click. If you do end up submitting this to tech support, feel free to suggest that they send it my way so I can at least make some notes on it; that may make it easier for us to triage the issue.

Just for whatever it’s worth:

It doesn’t seem to be an issue with splines (other than the fact they may have been the original source of geometry)  .  I didn’t inspect in great detail, but it looked like all the polyline holes were made up of plain polylines (no arcs or splines that I noticed).  I noticed that boolean operations seemed to be smooth and fast as ever if they are all done in succession (starting with the clean rectangular polyline and never de-selecting it).  If however the polyline with multiple complex holes is de-selected and then re-selected we have the problems. 
 

Not sure what the deal is because I’ve done this type of thing many many times.  Maybe I just never reached that number of segments in the contained holes.  

[BenMerritt]

38 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Maybe I just never reached that number of segments in the container holes.  

If this is caused by what I think it might be, then yes, that's precisely the issue. Reducing the number of spline segments before converting the splines to polylines would have improved the performance somewhat (at the cost of reduced detail).

[Alaskan_Son]

6 hours ago, BenMerritt said:

You may be able to work around the issue by marquee-selecting the spline instead of doing a single click.

 

Just to clarify what Ben is talking about here and to confirm.  You absolutely CAN completely get around the issue, not by marquee selecting the spline, but by marquee selecting the main polyline.  In that particular plan, the real trick is how to select only the one polyline because not only do you have 2 overlapping polylines in that plan, but you also have the underlying picture box which is also the exact same size of shape as the 2 polylines.  First you'll have to get that sorted and then it all works like butter.  There are a few ways to separate the aforementioned items, but here's one...

 

1. Group select all 3 using a marquee.
2. Click again on the edge of the 3 objects while holding down the control key.  This should reduce your selection to 2 objects.
3. Drag those 2 objects off to the side a specific distance using the Tab key.  It should become apparent which objects were separated now.
4. If the object that remains is the picture, simply place that onto it's own layer, lock that layer, and then repeat steps 2 and 3 to separate the first 2 objects and drag just the one back into position.  If the object that remains is the unwanted polyline, simply delete it, repeat steps 2 and 3 to separate the picture box and good polyline, put picture on locked layer, blah blah blah.  The point is that you use the same tricks to separate the objects and get the picture onto the locked layer so that all future selections of the main polyline can easily be done with a marquee.  Any changes to the size or shape of the main polyline would have to be done using boolean operations because selection with a single click is not an option.  Again though, no problems at all when selecting with a marquee.

Thanks for the tip @BenMerritt.  I've never had the issue quite to this extent, but I have had some notable slowdowns with similar scenarios and I think this method may help speed things up a bit until you can get this issue addressed. 

[Lakeside-E]

13 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Just for whatever it’s worth:

It doesn’t seem to be an issue with splines (other than the fact they may have been the original source of geometry)  .  I didn’t inspect in great detail, but it looked like all the polyline holes were made up of plain polylines (no arcs or splines that I noticed).  I noticed that boolean operations seemed to be smooth and fast as ever if they are all done in succession (starting with the clean rectangular polyline and never de-selecting it).  If however the polyline with multiple complex holes is de-selected and then re-selected we have the problems. 
 

Not sure what the deal is because I’ve done this type of thing many many times.  Maybe I just never reached that number of segments in the contained holes.  

Yes, I used the splined but converted to polylines after creation to allow regular cad lines to connect. The blob of terror is a polyline with subtracted holes but i do think it has to do with the number of segments as you say. How many that is I cannot tell but enough to be a major headache. 

 

Of note. when i created the fretwork screen. I used arcs and lines in that instead of the splines because everything was uniform. I was still

some minor slow downs but nothing as uncomfortable as this latest round.

 

13 hours ago, BenMerritt said:

For splines, you can do this with the "New Segment Angle" option:


I suspect that I may know what's causing the slowdown in this case, although I can't confirm that with certainty at the moment. You may be able to work around the issue by marquee-selecting the spline instead of doing a single click. If you do end up submitting this to tech support, feel free to suggest that they send it my way so I can at least make some notes on it; that may make it easier for us to triage the issue.

 

I wasnt familiar with this DBX before but I will keep it in mind for the future when similar needs arise. I did submit this to tech support already, when they reply I will have them send it your way.

 

13 hours ago, BenMerritt said:

If this is caused by what I think it might be, then yes, that's precisely the issue. Reducing the number of spline segments before converting the splines to polylines would have improved the performance somewhat (at the cost of reduced detail).

 

7 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

 

Just to clarify what Ben is talking about here and to confirm.  You absolutely CAN completely get around the issue, not by marquee selecting the spline, but by marquee selecting the main polyline.  In that particular plan, the real trick is how to select only the one polyline because not only do you have 2 overlapping polylines in that plan, but you also have the underlying picture box which is also the exact same size of shape as the 2 polylines.  First you'll have to get that sorted and then it all works like butter.  There are a few ways to separate the aforementioned items, but here's one...

 

1. Group select all 3 using a marquee.
2. Click again on the edge of the 3 objects while holding down the control key.  This should reduce your selection to 2 objects.
3. Drag those 2 objects off to the side a specific distance using the Tab key.  It should become apparent which objects were separated now.
4. If the object that remains is the picture, simply place that onto it's own layer, lock that layer, and then repeat steps 2 and 3 to separate the first 2 objects and drag just the one back into position.  If the object that remains is the unwanted polyline, simply delete it, repeat steps 2 and 3 to separate the picture box and good polyline, put picture on locked layer, blah blah blah.  The point is that you use the same tricks to separate the objects and get the picture onto the locked layer so that all future selections of the main polyline can easily be done with a marquee.  Any changes to the size or shape of the main polyline would have to be done using boolean operations because selection with a single click is not an option.  Again though, no problems at all when selecting with a marquee.

Thanks for the tip @BenMerritt.  I've never had the issue quite to this extent, but I have had some notable slowdowns with similar scenarios and I think this method may help speed things up a bit until you can get this issue addressed. 

 

I didnt know that marque selecting made a difference but it certainly does... Any insight as to why Ben?

Working on seperating the overlapped parts now. Hopefully I can get through this one without having to restart. Any predictions if the problems i am having now will carry through once the polyline is extruded to a polyline solid?

 

Thanks again for all of the help

[Alaskan_Son]

2 hours ago, Lakeside-E said:

Any predictions if the problems i am having now will carry through once the polyline is extruded to a polyline solid?

 

Yes.  You'll have the same problem.  You'll need to marquee select still.  If you convert to an Architectural Block or Symbol though, then there's no problem.  Note that if you try to Explode the Architectural Block though that you'll have problems.

[DzinEye]

On 11/23/2020 at 4:51 PM, glennw said:

Build Image>Create Billboard Image>enter the path to the image and make any changes>Transparency panel>Use Custom Transparency Color>select the color assigned to the spaces.

Great idea Glenn!... I had thought of mentioning use of a see-through billboard as I've frequently seen it used in games, but I didn't know if or how to achieve it in Chief.  

[Alaskan_Son]

4 minutes ago, DzinEye said:

I had thought of mentioning use of a see-through billboard as I've frequently seen it used in games, but I didn't know if or how to achieve it in Chief.  

 

I personally almost never use this method.  It has a few notable issues to contend with.  One of the most problematic though is that the results are essentially useless in Vector based views.

[DzinEye]

9 hours ago, Alaskan_Son said:

Thanks for the tip @BenMerritt.  I've never had the issue quite to this extent, but I have had some notable slowdowns with similar scenarios and I think this method may help speed things up a bit until you can get this issue addressed. 

Really interesting... I hope that we'll get more insight into this from Chief.   Before I gave up (before you and Ben got involved) I had managed to separate out the picture onto it's own layer, but after the 2nd literally 10-minute choking session my computer went through I had to call it quits.   Very curious why marquee select avoids the problem.

[DzinEye]

2 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said:

 

I personally almost never use this method.  It has a few notable issues to contend with.  One of the most problematic though is that the results are essentially useless in Vector based views.

Yes, that limitation can be a no-go for sure.  Was thinking that most likely a landscape screen would really only be needed for enhancing 3D views.

[Lakeside-E]

1 hour ago, DzinEye said:

Yes, that limitation can be a no-go for sure.  Was thinking that most likely a landscape screen would really only be needed for enhancing 3D views.

to touch on this a bit more and to show how the finished fretwork acts, here are some renders using it in one of its applications. having it a solid object has alot of benefits...

[Alaskan_Son]

1 hour ago, DzinEye said:

Was thinking that most likely a landscape screen would really only be needed for enhancing 3D views.

Perhaps.  Using images have a number of other issues even in standard views, but ignoring those for the moment, I actually use vector based views (both Vector Views and Watercolor with Line Drawing) for about 95% of the 3D views that I send out.  

[DzinEye]

50 minutes ago, Lakeside-E said:

to touch on this a bit more and to show how the finished fretwork acts, here are some renders using it in one of its applications. having it a solid object has alot of benefits...

Ya, for sure you'd need to model it if you're using it as part of the house as you've done.  Looks nice.  I assume in reality you'd need some kind of framework to hold those screens in place?   Were you able to finish the 'sprig' panel using the tips from Michael and Ben above?