A cluttered engineering drawing causes wastes of time and resources, as your computer moves slower and slower, and there is significant chance of corruption. Here are eight ways to declutter an engineering drawing.
Audit and Recover
As these commands are generally used to remove errors from AutoCAD drawings, they can be perfect for a drawing that is overbloated with data.
To perform this function, use the AUDIT command (in the command line). The Command line will now ask you to specify whether you want to fix detected errors or not. Type Y for yes, and press enter to find all detected errors.
The Recover command can be used when the drawing is corrupt to the point where it can’t be reopened. In this situation, open a blank drawing and type in the command Recover, and a window will open with a list of files to select from. AutoCAD will attempt to reopen the file and remove the errors from it.
DGN Purge
And sometimes a file may seem bloated even though there’s no data. This will become evident when certain functions seem to go slow, like selecting objects, or a slow cursor, or copy and pasting.
The worst part about this error is that it can spread to other files if parts of the affected file are copied and pasted into it. The underlying cause of this issue is an improper data import of DGN files causing a massive drawing database.
With AutoCAD 2015 or later, type PURGE into the command line, then select “Automatically purge orphaned data”. The problem should then be fixed.
PURGE
These are probably the most common tools used to clean a drawing. Purging a drawing means to clean all unused or redundant entities such as blocks, layers, and line types. To use the Purge command, type PURGE into the command line, and a purge window will open. You can select specific things to purge, or hit Purge All. You may need to hit Purge All more than once to get rid of everything. You will know it’s clean when the Purge All button gets grayed out.
Overkill
Overkill is another cleanup tool that deletes or merges all overlapping or duplicate entities. To use this, type OVERKILL into the command bar. You will be prompted to select an area, which you can do, or you can select ALL, and your entire drawing will be applied with Overkill.
Write Block
This method should be used as a last resort because it causes a loss of data from your drawing, including layer assignments. The command transfers all drawing elements to another clean and blank template and leaves all of the unwanted clutter behind. The command for this is WBLOCK.
It will open the write block window, from which you can select Objects, and then select the base point for your selection, after which you expand the selection to encompass all drawing entities in your drawing area. You can also use the Entire button instead of selecting an area, but by selecting the area yourself you are sure you’re not selecting invisible layers outside your drawing area.
In the Destination window, specify a file path and name, and the cleaned drawing will go there.
Cleaning Unreferenced Regapps
The drawing’s performance may start to show signs of slowing and growing beyond its normal size if there are unregistered application IDs. To clean these, type -Purge into the command line. Then select Regapp and the command line will prompt you to select Regapps over and over until all are purged.
There are other applications of Regapp, and if you’re looking to purge more than one file, the Regapp ID cleanup utility tool is a batch process you can use.
Drawing Purge Add-In
This is a free add-in from the Autodesk app store. This tool can purge almost all redundant data and unused entities in your drawing including unused DGN data.
If a drawing contains an X-ref then it will scan for DGN data in referenced files as well and ask you if you want to clean data from those also.
The tool can be used in bulk to clean many drawings at once. To do this, click on the Batch Purge icon and a batch drawing purge and settings window will appear. You can select which drawings you wish to purge.
Smartpurger
Also available from the Autodesk app store is Smartpurger. In its trial version it can purge a maximum of 10 files, but the full version can do unlimited files.