| Applies To | |||
| Product(s): | AECOsim Building Designer | ||
| Version(s): | 08.11.09.593 | ||
| Environment: | N/A | ||
| Area: | Drawing Extraction | ||
| Subarea: | Drawing Rules | ||
| Original Author: | Marc Thomas, Bentley Technical Support Group | ||
Problem Description
Opening some files in AECOsim Buiilding Designer can be slowed down by the regeneration of automated annotation symbols, door and window identification labels for instance. Messages mentioning “MicroStation visibility calculator” may be displayed and are a good indicator that performance is being affected by Auto Annotation.
The visibility calculator is the scan process that looks for any geometry changes that would affect the display of annotation, and it’s that scanning process that consumes most of the time and resources, not the creation of the annotation itself.
A consensus has emerged that running auto annotation constantly is unnecessary on a day to day basis, it can be turned on at appropriate review points to create or regenerate the annotation.
Reason
There are two configration variables that control the behaviour of auto annotation, these can be set to give you control over when auto-annotation runs.
BB_AUTOANNOTATION is set by default to USER enabling each user to set the ‘Enable Auto Annotations’ toggle on the Builder Designer menu to control whether or not they are being processed automatically.
When on, auto Annotation will apply whenever a Building dynamic view is created, referenced, or opened in a drawing or sheet model. It also runs when relevant dynamic view reference settings are modified.
BB_AUTOANNOTATION_ONCREATE runs Auto Annotation after opening a newly created dynamic view drawing or sheet, regardless of the value of BB_AUTOANNOTATION and is turned on by default (set to 1).
This can slow down file opening as a model becomes more complex
BB_AUTOANNOTATION
BB_AUTOANNOTATION can be set to manual, in which case the Refresh Automatic Annotations tool, in the Drawing Composition 2D task must be used to refresh each sheet. This is probably going to require too much manual intervention.
Leaving BB_AUTOANNOTATION set to USER is the best option as it allows user choice.
BB_AUTOANNOTATION_ONCREATE
If the value for BB_AUTOANNOTATION_ONCREATE is changed from 1 to 0 Auto Annotations will not be created in new dynamic view drawings or sheets. So while setting it to 0 will minimise impact on performance setting it to 1 will only have an impact on performance when the DV is created.
At that point AECOsim Buiilding Designer will search for qualifying rule-based annotation elements and generate the labels. This engenders confidence that the application and data are both performing correctly.
It will have no effect on subsequent file open events so is recommended as a site setting, only being changed to 0 at the project level if there are particular performance issues on a project when creating DV/BVs.
User Action
In either case each individual should set the ‘Enable Auto Annotations’ toggle on the Builder Designer menu to Off, only setting it to On when required to generate or update Auto Annotation.
Recommended Settings
BB_AUTOANNOTATION = USER
BB_AUTOANNOTATION_ONCREATE = 1
[both are the Bentley defaults]
Drawing Rules
As an additional step, if there are Drawing Rules that you do not need at the current project stage they can be turned off to reduce processing load/time, then turned back on at the approprioate stage in the project.
User Training
If these recommendations are implemented it can appear that Annotation is missing or out of date and users may think there is a fault with the application or model data.
Users need to understand how and when to generate/regenerate auto-annotation.