AutoCAD Drawings That Triple In Size

[crystalrae]

We have been having a lot of problems with drawings. I had a drawings that was 5MB in size this morning when I started on it and not it is 30MB. The only thing I did was change the titleblock and switchged places with four other things. I know how to fix the problem to get it back to 5MB but I was just wondering if anyone else has been having this problem.

We are running R14 on an NT4 network. This just started happening recently. It's really weird. I don't know if it's a network issue (we have a lot of those) or something goofing in AutoCAD (we also seem to have that problem a lot). Sometimes we can't run certain command on CAD until the IT department frees up some network space.

Just interested in some ideas if anyone has them.

Thanks!

 

[RivieraCadMan]

How were you able to fix the problem and I may be able to help.

 

[hdaven]

I ran into a similar problem, where there was nothing in the file at all (using the dblist command to check), yet the file was 18M. I'm not too sure why it does it....but just to let you know...you're not the only one having that problem.

 

[swertel]

Did you try doing a purge all or a save as? Sometimes just a Save As will create a smaller file. You than delete the old file name and rename the Save As name to the original.

May not work. Just a suggestion.

 

[crystalrae]

The way I downsize the file is to use the WBlock command and select the titleblock and everything inside it. Purging the drawing really doesn't work - maybe just a few KB. It's just a really big pain to do this and it seems like it's not going to get better...

 

[RivieraCadMan]

Did you insert the title block as a block? If you did, was it exploded at any point before fixing it with the wblock command? Is this tiltle block the one you use as a standard?

 

[crystalrae]

The titleblock was on the drawing previously. It is our standard titleblock. Most of the time we will take drawings that are already done and just save them as the new drawings because most of our systems have the same base.

 

[RivieraCadMan]

I have similar problems with my CAD department, but it's usually files or referances to some inserted block like a key or Access database. I can't seem to pin down where yours would be comming from though. When you make a wblock your actually purging the drawing of everything accept what you selected. It breaks the link between the items in the background of the drawing and the items you selected. The question is what may be in the background that you havn't been able to find. They only way to solve this is open one of the drawings and rename it. Explode all blocks within the drawing so that your only working with basic components, then use the purge command. Pay attention to the items that are purged out, and try to track where they origionate.

 

[ODE]

Crystalrae, why are you inserting the title block or border.
Please, consider referencing the border, title block on to the file and insert the title fields on to the drawing via an attibuted wblock which contains the fill in information you require.

The title block data is still available for data extract.
Referencing the borders adds zero memory to the drawing file and if the border has to be fixed for some reason the border file is changed at one location and the whole project gets updated instantly. Also, should you want to use the same project for another client, copy the project to another folder along with the referenced border change the border to accommadate the new client and the preliminary working copy is ready to go for markup.

ODE.

 

[Striker]

There are many reasons why a drawing can grow from a manageable 5 megs to a 30 meg monster. This has mostly to do with the insertion of blocks that contain information from a drawing template. Keep in mind that every drawing that uses paperspace with viewports will create two block definitions that are not purgable by using the purge command. These are $paper_space and $model_space these will contain all the references to layers, dimensions, blocks, etc. that is used in the particular template. (sombody correct me if I am wrong here) When the referenced drawing is inserted, the block references are inserted as well. Since the information in the block is presumed to be "vital" to the drawing (since it is from the template) purge will not remove it, even if there are no entities in the drawing. The WBlock command solves this issue because it simply creates a new drawing based on the current entities in the drawing. Since $paper_space and $model_space are block references and not insertions then they are not written to the WBlocked drawing, this will also remove unreferenced layers, dimstyles, linetypes, textstyles, block, vports etc. as well as the "undo" information that is stored in the drawing (don't know why that is even there since you can't undo after a save and reopen). This will create a much smaller drawing. Of course if this does not work for you, then try turning on all layers in modelspace and make sure all layers are thawed, you may find there are more things there than you imagined.

 

[RivieraCadMan]

Great Striker. You put my thoughts into words exactly, except for the $paper_space and $model_space variable which I didn't think about.

 

[crystalrae]

I'm not inserting blocks - I'm not bringing in garbage from them. I simply open a drawing that exists as 1.32 MB. I change text "Notes:" to "NOTES:" and it triples in size.

I just want to know why - or if anyone is having the same type of problem. I know how to fix them but it's a pain to. I was hoping someone out there could tell me it's something wrong with my AutoCAD or it's a network problem or something.

 

[Striker]

Do you have any "housekeeping" routines, autoloaded lisp, VBA or other executed routines upon startup? In our office we have a number of these that do everything from maintaining a drawing log to automatically creating new layers, tabs, viewports, plot settings etc.. I would suggest however that you WBLock the entire drawing. Then attempt the changes to see what happens.