General expectations and guidelines

Importing large CAD models can significantly degrade the performance of many E3D Design functions, such as Add-to-drawlist, 3D view navigation and manipulation, clash checks, and 2D drawing views of the model. It may also affect data transfer / synch latency times for Global and Spectrum.

For this reason it is important to stay vigilant and avoid imports of too large / too many models, and to adhere to the best practice guidelines where such imports cannot be avoided.

It is difficult for AVEVA to provide any detailed recommendations on size, because the performance impact on the E3D Design users will be affected by many different factors, such as hardware and networks used, as well as the properties of the individual model. This means that some apparently 'large' models may import and perform well, while smaller ones may cause performance issues. Some formats such a Navisworks have been shown to be highly dense, and where the import of a reasonably sized file may slow down the system more than a 10 times larger STEP file.

This means that it is not possible to provide concrete guidelines on size limits of importable models, but as a rule of thumb the following recommendations for different size ranges could be considered when planning for importing CAD models to E3D Design.

AVEVA recommends making tests to establish the best approach for the individual project requirements.

Models up to around 10MB or 20MB

• Models of this size seldom cause any performance issues and can normally be freely imported in full detail.

• In case very many instances of these models will be used in the project, it could still be considered to use Model Simplification to optimize the performance.

Models from around 10MB/20MB up to a few hundred MB

• Some care should be applied when importing models in this size range. Some models imported in full detail may work well without too much of a performance impact, but there can be cases of scalability issues, especially if many models of this size range are to be imported into the project.

• Where applicable, it should be considered to use Model Simplification to reduce the size of the models and improve performance.

Models of many hundred MB size

• A few models of this size may import and display successfully without too much impact on performance, but most models in this range will have a negative impact on performance and should be avoided.

• For models of this size range, careful consideration should be applied to try and reduce the size before importing, for example by using the Model Simplification tool

• Please consider that, if there will only be a handful of models of this size in the project, it could still work OK to import and use these in full detail. But if there will be many models of this size it may become unmanageable.

• The alternative method of Equipment Templates as described above should also be considered.

• If it is still decided to import models of this size, then AVEVA recommends to carefully test performance of different E3D Design features while handling these models before introducing them into the project for all users.

Models larger than 1GB

• It is generally not recommended to import such large models to E3D Design because this will quite often have a very notable negative impact on performance, and may in some cases make the application unusable.

• For such large models, it is highly recommended to break them down into smaller chunks before separately importing each one.

• This can be combined with using Model Simplification on each part or even considering the alternative methods such as equipment templates mentioned above.