Let Your Drawing Respond Faster in ZWCAD

Processing speed of CAD software is one of the most concerned issues of every user. Fast speed can be achieved directly by either software or hardware upgrade. In case of ordinary PC configuration, how can we further raise the speed even without software update? Here are some tips.

1. If we frequently specify the color or linetype for certain entities instead of using Bylayer or Byblock features, data will increase dramatically in our drawing, and it will take more time to process these data. Before you start to draw, it is suggested to make appropriate assignments of the layers you are going to use, ensuring that entities of different meanings or properties are assigned to corresponding layers respectively. By doing so, the option of Bylayer and Byblock can help to reduce the amount of data stored.

2. If there are lots of layers in our drawing, some of which contain complicated entities seldom used, then we can freeze these layers, so that they would not regenerate with other layers, and result in processing time saving.

3. Hatch (Fill) is a kind of entity occupying much RAM. Too many hatches would significantly drag down the processing speed. To maintain high speed, we can try the following three approaches.

(1) Do the hatching at the last step, so that there are no hatches affecting the speed during previous drafting steps.

(2) Assign all hatches to a single or some specific layers and freeze some or all of them if possible. Then they will not regenerate with other entities.

(3) In the Config dialogue box, select the Display tab and check the option Not display hatch while zooming.

Entities such as Solid, Donut and Trace have another kind of fill. They can be displayed faster by setting OFF for FILLMODE.

4. Text also has influence on the speed of ZOOM, REDRAW and REGEN. Simplifying the display mode of text could help to increase the speed to a large extent. Here are two ways to try.

(1) Use a simple text font during the preliminary drafting work, and then replace this font with desired ones at the final stage when there are no more modifications to other graphic entities.

(2) Use QTEXT to enable quick display of text. After the command is activated, boundary frames of text areas are displayed instead of text themselves. But when we are going to plot the drawing, the function must be turned off, or the text plotted would appear as frames.

5. In the case that we have to insert raster images, here are two suggestions.

(1) Go to the Config dialogue box, select the Display tab and check the option Pan and zoom with raster & OLE, if it is not necessary to view raster images while doing PAN and ZOOM.

(2) Use the command IMAGEQUALITY to choose a low quality display mode, when we don’t need to view images with high quality. But we might need to set the high quality mode for plotting.

6. When REGENMODE is set as ON, ZWCAD will regenerate graphics automatically after executing some commands. Turning the mode off can help to save the time spent on automatic regeneration of graphics.

7. Entities often turn into dash line type for the purpose of highlighting when they are selected for modification. Sometimes such highlights take lots of time to display. So we can think of closing HIGHLIGHT if necessary.

Not all methods might suit each specific case, but they do help if applied properly. When we get familiar with these features, drafting work could never be a difficulty in terms of speed, and we may find it easy and convenient to use ZWCAD in any situations.