Inside AutoCAD and BricsCAD, we have a very big advantage of being able to open any dwg or dxf file, and then start 3D modeling on that drawing as an underlayer.

But with that advantage comes the following downsides and risks : 

  • How many objects are in that drawing? Large amounts may slow down your 3D modeling experience.
    Don't let yourself get fooled by block references in this regard. There may be many objects hidden inside nested block references.
  • How many layers, text styles, layer styles, dimension styles are already in this drawing? They will be the other drafter's naming and practices, not yours. They may swamp your drawing, making it a challenge for you to find your own styles in the list.
  • Dwg files from others may contain proxy objects, which can cause drawing save errors in AutoCAD and instability in BricsCAD.
    It is hard to get remove proxy objects once they are in your drawing, but see below for a method that should work
  • There are many AutoCAD/BricsCAD variables stored in the dwg file itself, and simply opening a dwg file will force those variables from the other drafter on you, and not your own drawing template variables.
  • Parabuild views on GA drawings will by default include all the objects in the model, even lines, solids and block references.
    You will have to hide all the objects that you do not want to see on GA drawings (through disabled layers or other means).


Our proposed solutions for this

  • Copy/paste only the objects that you need from the other drawings into your own new drawing
  • Remove the objects once you have no need for them any more


Cleaning up a drawing, troubleshooting a drawing

If you still end up with a drawing that is bloated, there are methods to clean it up.

We can use the purge command in AutoCAD/BricsCAD, but this will not remove proxy objects nor will it remove styles that are in use.

To remove proxy objects, and purge other unnecessary bloat from your 3D model you should follow these steps : 

  • Use the command PrB_CreateBlockrefsForSheets as explained here. We need this so that we don't lose the Parabuild sheets in the model.
  • Select all the objects in the 3D model that you need, including the sheet block references
  • Copy/paste all of these objects into a new, clean drawing
  • Refresh all the sheets in the new drawing to fix their links

The copy/paste operation will do a much more aggressive purge because only the styles and blocks that are used by the objects that you selected will be copied over to the new drawing.
Proxy objects are also removed this way.

The commands ExportToAutoCAD and PrB_CopyToOtherDrawing can also be used to export the model to another drawing. These commands use other methods than the copy/paste for the copying, so they are a good backup tool in case the drawing has become corrupted somehow.

Another drawing repair tool is the command PrB_CopyExtDatabase. This command can inject objects from a drawing into the current drawing. The 'other' drawing is only partially opened, which means this command can often succeed on very corrupt drawings that are otherwise not repairable. The downside is that this command only retrieves lines, profiles, plates, bolts, volumes, and solids but not sheets, block references, styles, layers, blocks, macros, or bolt patterns.