ACAD DWGS ARE HUUUGE!!

[CRiMCO]

Well, here is one to chew on . . .
Our city maps (AutoCAD, dwn in R12, now editing in R2009 or R2011) generally run between 250kB and 700kB. But several are running from 9mB to 24mB. When opening one of these behemoths, the screen generates in a couple of seconds, but loading continues, along with a percent-loaded progress bar for perhaps another minute. Both in R2009 and R2011.

Here's what we have done:
Purged
-purged regapps, zero-length objects, empty text
deleted annotation scales
wblocked out
inserted wblock into a new drawing
deleted "All" and windowed out of the selection set the actual drawing while holding down the shift key.
checked for xrefs/images

The capper: each time we try a new strategy, like those above, the drawing grows by 1 to 1-1/2 mB! We started at 19mB file size, and it's now 24mB+

One thing . . . each of these drawings did have some large xreffed air photos in them which were later detached.

All ideas will be warmly appreciated!
Rocky . . .


Cheers . . . Rocky

 

[francesca]

Open the file with RECOVER, not open.
Turn off PROXYGRAPHICS.

 

[dik]

A well known manufacturing firm in Lindsay, Ontario, modelled a single chain link using ProE... they combined this into a chain and then into a chain conveyor used for the logging industry.

File size was so huge, it 'clogged' their server...

Dik

 

[chicopee]

First purge the file, then make the whole file a block then explode it. A lot of redundancy will be cleared off and the file will be smaller.

 

[MiketheEngineer]

I have had some(??) luck saving as a DXF and then bringing it back in and re-saving as a DWG. Make sure you have backups BEFORE doing this!!

 

[ohiocad]

Didn't see it in your list, and not sure which version of Cad you're on, but first thing I'd check would be if there are any layer filters that can be dumped.

We've had client drawings go from 30mb down to 200k with that.

 

[CRiMCO]

Thanks for all the help with my huuuge file problem!

Nothing worked until someone told me to try deleting All objects, Save, and then Oops. It worked where nothing else did. Strange~!

My file size dropped from the 18mb it had worked itself up to and ended up at a filesize of 625kb.

Thanks for getting me thinking along the correct lines!

Cheers . . . Rocky

 

[brandonbw]

Can anyone explain why what CRiMCO did worked??

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil and Structural Engineering

http://bwengr.com

 

[MikeHalloran]

I'm guessing Crimco managed to flush all the information that was saved in the dwg just in case of an Undo or two.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[zdas04]

Can someone describe WHAT Crimco did? I got the delete all objects and the save, but what the heck is Oops?

David

 

[MikeHalloran]

http://www.ncsu.edu/project/graphicscourse/gc/acadtut/oops1.html

Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[IFRs]

Oops un-deletes the last deleted objects. As if you deleted then went oops!

 

[zuccus]

I maybe a little late on this, but delete your layer filters. They have a tendency to overpopulate as your bring blocks in and stuff. I am 90% sure this is your problem.

I wrote a script a few years ago to run through all of our drawings on the network one night and delete all of the layer filters. It reduced the drawing size by at least 90%.

 

[nattyb52]

Blocks embedded in blocks or blocks in xrefs can cause this, but the worst offender is hatch editing. You van make a 60 kb file into a 60 mb monster by hatch editing large hatches several times. Wblocking to a new file will fix a lot of that.