If you need to handle large files in Rhino, you can follow some of the following tips that will help you to streamline the workflow in Rhino and VisualARQ:
Show levels and uncheck the cut plane Check in the Level Manager if there are any hidden levels, or if the cut plane is activated on a specific level. The performance will be better when no cut plane is activated or no level is hidden in the Level Manager.
Avoid using clipping planes or VisualARQ sections Check in the Section Manager if there is any section activated unnecessarily. No matter if the section is cutting objects or not, when a section is enabled, the performance might be affected. The same tip applies to Rhino clipping planes.
Choose the appropriate Display mode settings Wireframe and Shaded are faster display modes. In contrast, Rendered, Pen, Artistic or Technical display modes slow down the performance. Moreover, if you have the Shadows enabled, the performance will be slower.
Hide objects Hide the geometry that you don’t need to see while working on a project. The fewer objects displayed in the view, the better the performance will be. If you have that geometry organized in Layers, it will be easier to hide and show them by turning those layers on and off.
Be aware of complex objects Free-form geometry or objects that contain many faces may affect the performance.
Show one viewport only Show one expanded viewport only while you are working, rather than showing 4 or multiple viewports at the same time. Rhino needs to “paint” the geometry in each viewport independently, so it will be faster to show it only in one.
Use jagged and faster Render Mesh Quality settings Any other custom setting may give better mesh quality results, but slow down some operations while modeling. The “Jagged and faster” should be fair enough quality to have pleasant modeling and display experience. This setting can be adjusted from the Document Properties > Mesh.
Be aware of Absolute Unit Tolerance When working with architectural projects, a reasonable good value would be 1 or 0,1 millimeter for the Document Units “Absolute tolerance”. Any other smaller value will force Rhino and VisualARQ to do more complex and accurate operations and this may affect the performance considerably. The absolute tolerance value in VisualARQ templates is 1mm, but in Rhino templates it might be different. This setting can be adjusted from the Document Properties > Units.
Note: VisualARQ relies on Rhino capabilities (and obviously on system features) to handle small or larger models. The fact you are using VisualARQ in your model won’t affect the performance although it might increase the file size by no more than 15% than working on the same file without VisualARQ. In some cases, it might produce even lighter models, since VisualARQ tries to use extrusions whenever it is possible and instantiate identical objects. In any case, VisualARQ manages geometry with data, that’s why the file size might change slightly in some situations.