The H-Factor

Reducing Entropy

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Welcome

Recently our previous blog service (Typepad) ended their business – so, we have a new home. It will take a bit to get images back and displaying properly, but we are working on it! Final pageview count of original Typepad blog: 387,232

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Using a Non-Standard Pipe Type in HydraCALC

A customer called today asking how to enter a 1″ black plastic underground pipe for the calc. This particular situation sounded unique enough that I did not tell him to add that pipe type to our database, as I would have if he expected to see this pipe type used repeatedly. I told him to…

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Using the Hydratec Software Download Area

Hydratec uses ShareFile to distribute our software installs and updates. New customers, or those without access, must request access to be able to get at these downloads. Access is only available to customers with a Hydratec subscription or those on an update plan. You can access the download area and request access by picking the…

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March 2011
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Speeding up Large 3D Jobs

Are your drawing getting really, really big and slowing down the raising up of your drawing and the AutoCalc and AutoList processes? Are you carrying around huge background drawings?

XREFing in the background drawings doesn't help. But there is something that does:

Plot the background drawings to a DWF and then XREF the DWF in. This can reduce the elevation time up to 80%. In fact, you can plot each series of layers to a DWF (ie Steel layers, Wall layers, etc) to individual XREFS and then use the XREF Manager to Unload and Reload as you want to see or not see certain things.

Another thing – If you have many floors in a single drawing, you should be using System Boundaries to isolate those parts of the building you are currently calcing or listing. If the drawing is still slow, consider reducing the number of floors per sheet. It may seem easy to keep everything on one drawing but every time you do anything – even a move or copy – you are paying a price.

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