LayOut Keeps Getting Worse

Hello All,

I’m an Architectural Designer and I’ve been working on a retail center project in LayOut. Basically, I have an existing LayOut file that was already set up with views and annotations, and that worked okay. Super slow, but okay. Parts of the design have changed, and my task is to update the elevations.

Simple, right?

Nope. It just keeps getting worse. It’s getting harder to do anything, and LayOut just freezes entirely when I click to open another page.

The Layout file size is 251MB, it contains 10 pages with about 4-5 elevations on each page. The large LayOut file size seems odd since the SketchUp file being referenced is only 38MB. I created a special file of only the necessary geometry/components for the LayOut elevations. The previous referenced SketchUp file was the entire model which was almost 200MB, so it’s especially odd that it’s preforming worse with a smaller file.

I’ve already purged it, and run Cleanup, and used the Material Resizer. It was 55MB before that. I’ve also purged all of the old SKP refence files from LayOut so it’s just the current model in there now.

I’ve been working in LayOut 2022. I downloaded 2024, but that seems to be preforming worse if anything. I’ve even changed everything from hybrid to raster. What else can I do?

Thanks!

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Posting your file (through a cloud service) would allow forum members to look inside to see if something is wrong.

I noticed in some of my LO files that, apparently, over the course of time I had inadvertently pasted elements on layers I would later hide.

This increased my document size and slowed down my workflow, but I didn’t notice until later, since those layers where for guides/placeholders etc. that I did not check regularly. Some even had items on top of one another and were dragged out of view, becoming even less visible after changing the size of the page.

Perhaps this applies to you, hope it helps and you find the solution either way.

I’d really love to, but I don’t think the client wants this getting out to the public yet.

In the LayOut file? That could be a possibility. I just created a new document from scratch in LO24 with this same file referenced in, and it seems to be working perfectly so far. It might just be a corrupted file or something.

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Yes in the layout file. Glad to hear you now have a working file either way!

Well, I’m not thrilled about having to start over but at least the new file is quicker.

I’ve notice that LayOut files don’t always get smaller when you delete things: my suspicion is that deleted pages and elements stay in the file somehow. Hence the 250MB file size. One day I hope to figure out how to purge those items.

I feel you. I don’t know why but I definitely think Layout becomes slow quick. That’s why I do 1 layout file per 1 page.

This is not my experience.

Layout Is getting better!!! LOL im not posting a problem. Its a curiosity. Layout 2024 had problems for me exporting to PDF in the first version. I had Bugsplats sometimes not all elements of the Layout file show up in the PDF there were problems. The same LO 2024 file exported fine in Layout 2023 so no problem. The updated LO 2024.0 553 came out so I gave the exporting a try and it worked fine. (good job team) I just noticed that the PDF file size was much smaller from the latest version. I thought it might be a mistake so I re exported the same Layout file from both 2023 and 2024.0.553 and it is correct. the 2023 PDF is 168 mb and the 2024 is 39 mb a huge difference. Ive carefully looked over both PDF files and cannot tell any difference in content or line quality. I have not printed the file to see if there is a problem. Its good news but I wonder what changed?

That’s good to hear! Maybe there’s more compression done to the rasters (if you use raster or hybrid)?

We often have 20+ page layout files and in 2024 the speed increase has been quite noticeable compared to previous versions, espacially with new “experimental” graphic engine and draft mode.

It’s far from perfect but at least it’s getting better…

But using Layout files from previous version 2023 for me still is nearly impossible.
It crashes as soon as you update a reference. Not important if SKP file or Excel, just crashes,
so I turned back using the 2023 version!