We are working with files that have 100’s of linked blocks attached, where the core geometry is in the main model and various small assets are external linked blocks. It’s been a pretty good workflow which allows for files to be kept light as save quickly and also all other obvious advantages of this work organization.
However, we run into several problems and shortcomings which perhaps can already be improved:
These files tend to open for a long time, compared with same file if these blocks were embedded. Must be some internal maintenance/hookups going on, but It would be helpful to have some sort of progress bar showing the status of how many linked blocks are remaining. Sometimes it is a good 3-5 minutes wait, good coffee break if we had an idea of the loading speed.
Sometimes we need to open such main file quickly and don’t care about the linked assets. Is there a way to open a file and tell Rhino to ignore all linked blocks? The only way I know of is to Insert that file into another file as a linked block and uncheck “Read linked blocks from the file”:
However there is a downside to this workaround since all file-specific settings like render settings, named views etc. get lost. Would it be possible to have ability to open a file with an option to ignore all linked blocks?
Seems like there is a bug with the above method - when “Read linked blocks from the file” is unchecked but block definition type is set to Embedded, the linked blocks are still imported, the checkbox does nothing
It would be better if Rhino was turning redraw OFF for the time of linking the blocks. Currently it only does that when Opening a file with them, while when using Import, Insert or Copy/Paste, the redraw is on, which makes it quite slow to watch them appear one by one, especially in heavy files. This could be somehow remedied by creating macros for these actions with SetRedrawOn/Off before/after (in that case it loads the blocks much faster( but I think the redraw should be disabled by default.
Do you have any advice on the above? #3 is a bug if you can see it on your end
As for the other items I was wondering is there is any way via Python/Rhinocommon script to open a file without loading the reference blocks…? While inserting a file as a block is a workaround, it has some downsides, would be much cleaner to just tell Rhino to ignore linked blocks. Perhaps the hypenated _-Open command could have an option for that, without adding any extra file open dialog UI?
Hi Jarek - this seems expected to me, if I am seeing clearly - if the blocks are embedded they are not linked, or if Linked and Embedded, they are still part of the incoming file so would be expected to come along, I would say - but I may be misconstruing the setup.
I’ll ponder your other points and see what comes to mind…
Hi Pascal, I guess you can interpret this is different ways. If we go with Linked option and the linked file itself has linked blocks, then the file’s blocks are 2-level deep linked (or more). In case we embed the file that has linked blocks, these blocks still stay linked, but one level less (1-level+).
So, I guess we can just always pick “Linked” and skip the reference blocks that works that way, and then embed/explode to get the desired result…
hi Pascal,
Yes, that’s exactly the scenario I was reporting
Also, the reference blocks checkbox does nothing if you insert the file as Individual Objects or Group (in the next dialog), only works if the inserted file is a block. That also doesn’t make sense to me… More coffee??
But all these are just a side note discoveries.
What’s really needed is opening a file without linked blocks (plus the cosmetics of progress bar + redraw off)
