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bbfa235
(Get the code!)
The EPS files imports with an (sorry for the wording) with an enormous bloat due to the dense hatching with individual horizontal lines so dense that it looks like a solid filling at zoom level 1:1).
Importing 5 such EPS files (just a single import of the file you attached, saved as SVG, has a file size of 15.9 MB and contains 55'517 paths) is very likely to exceed Inkscape's capacity or exhaust available memory and crash in the end with a memory error.
Duplicating or even cloning the group multiple times (i.e. a single EPS file imported into an empty Inkscape document instead of repeated imports, and then cloned (Alt+D) and laid out as needed for the "production mask") will not greatly improve the situation AFAICT (if you actually only need several copies of the same design on one sheet without editing each imported design individually):
With a single imported file and 5 clones of the top-level group (~333'100 paths to render, even though file size will no grow significantly beyond the 15.9MB since clones are single objects linking to the original without replicating its SVG structure in the file), Inkscape 0.48.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.8 (i396) with 2GB RAM consumes so much of the available memory that the whole system slows down close to a stand still, and even very basic operations in Inkscape can take minutes before the screen updates. I didn't see Inkscape crash due to memory-related issues (though I did force quit it since I needed to continue working with other applications).
With current trunk (new cairo renderer and rendering cache) performance has improved, but with 8 clones of a single imported EPS file, the memory consumption of Inkscape is getting as huge, and operations in Inkscape (in outline view mode) are still very slow (tested with revision 10588, because later revisions will not handle such a large amount of stroked paths well at the moment).
Additionally, since you seem to use an older version of Inkscape (0.48.0) on linux, it is possible that you are affected by
Bug #168914 in Inkscape: “Inkscape requires large-config support in libgc”
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> Please advise as this blocks my work (…)
Possibly you need to consider using a real CAD application (which Inkscape does not aim nor claim to be), or - with regard to generating the original EPS file - you could test whether not using such dense hatching with closely spaced horizontal lines (using solid filled areas instead) will improve the handling in Inkscape (unless ofc those lines are an integral part of the design and not intended to imitate a solid fill).