Thanks Scott for your tip, I was looking to rid my AutoCAD of eDrawings too. I found that I had to manually delete the edw.mnc/l/s files AND the .arx file too. Now AutoCAD loads quickly again.
John
I've seen that once and the problem was that the part or assembly wasn't forced rebuilt before it was last saved. Make sure your user does a force rebuild on the part or assembly before the drawing is created.
John
Another option to a linear pattern is selecting the components from the FeatureManager and holding the ctrl key while you click and drag the components to the desired location.