Hi,I have a dwg file that I update on a weekley basis, and it's always been about 4mb in size. It's made up of an xref, a fair bit of hatching, text and a few other bits n bobs here and there.In the last week, the size of the file has increased to around 40mb, and I can't for the life of me figure out why!!Anyone got any suggestions? I've uploaded both files here if anyone wanted to take a look....  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mpitf3we9aqrwlq/AAAZlGA_9E6mfEi4d68W0Rfga?dl=0Thanksin advance

The problem stems primarily from having a ton of linetypes.  Did you happen to look at how many were loaded?  I assumed most weren't even being used and I was right.The secondary problem with your drawing is no one has bothered to clean it up.  It has duplicate objects, overlapping lines, dozens of unreferenced reg-apps, as well as other useless entities that are no longer germaine to the drawing.  All of this points to poor CAD practices by someone (not necessarily you as I don't know the true history of the drawing) but none-the-less when you receive a drawing or use parts of a drawing from someone else the FIRST thing you should do is clean it up with the Overkill, -Purge, Audit commands then follow that up by WBlocking everything out to a new drawing.I've gotten your file size down to under 2MB.

Ahhh, of course, the linetypes!! I did actually pick up on that a little while back, but it completely skipped my mind today. I did purge and performed a quick clean up, but obvioulsy not as in depth as you have done.The drawing was passed on to me from a few hands, from what I gather. So, It's always been a bit of a messy one. Like I said, I had it at around 4MB when I first started working on it, but I must have imported some data along the way, which carried over the linetypes etc.Thanks for taking a look. It's appreciated

A cheeky request, but I don't suppose you fancy sending over the cleaned up version do you?You don't ask, you don't get etc 

I think the best course of action would be for you to follow the advice I gave so you know how to do it in the future.  You aren't going to get someone to clean your drawing for free when you encounter a problem.  As a matter of fact you should record a macro that duplicates the proper steps.  The commands you need to include in the macro are:Overkill-Purge > Regapps-Purge > AllAudit (answer "yes" to fix errors)WBlock
John Connor2016-01-14 12:53:26

Cheers John. Cleaning as I type

What version of AutoCAD are you running?  Does it have the Action Recorder?I automate the running of the Overkill, -Purge and Audit commands but run the WBlock command manually if I feel it is needed.
John Connor2016-01-14 13:00:35

full 2014.I always purge (it's almost an OCD). But never really overkill or audit tbh. But I recon I'll be doing a bit more in terms of cleaning, from now on.I'll admit, I've been quite lazy with this particular drawing. It was passed on to me and I've never really given it much time or efforst, as I only need to change a few text boxes / amend small detail from time to time.

You need to include the dash < - > before the command name as we are using the command line version of Purge.  So it is...  -Purge.And 2014 does have the Action Recorder so you could create a macro for the first three steps and save it meaning anytime you want to use it all you have to do is play back the macro.
John Connor2016-01-14 13:08:11

Not sure if I'm being basic, but even after performing the above cleaning operations, the drawing size is still huge!I really need to get this back down to the 3/4mb It used to be, as we are uploading onto portals etc.Any advice? (John) lol

Either you did not supply me the entire drawing and many of the linetypes are actually being used (referenced) in the drawing or you re-introduced the linetypes, after they were purged, by doing a copy/paste of content from one drawing or the other.The only other explanation is that you did not properly perform the clean up steps as per our previous conversations.
John Connor2016-01-21 18:07:17

Well, the overkill and purges didn't appear to bring much up to be honest, only a couple of things. The audit took some time and a fair amount was 'fixed', but the file size is now 44MB!I haven't been copying in any detail from other drawings, but the line types are still very much loaded and I can't seem to get rid of them! John, I understand that I should work this out myself, and I will get round to looking deeper into the problem when I have more time to spare, but I need to get this file ready for upload and distribution asap. So, If you fancy lending me a hand (once CAD monkey to another), I'd be happy to give you a tip to help me out this time? If so, I'll send you an e-transmit of the latest drawing for you to clean and send back?I'll understand if you refuse, but you'd be helping me out a lot.Let me knowThanks

44MB?  I'm working remotely today on a laptop that isn't anywhere near as good as my desktop and I won't be back in the office until Monday. Did you WBlock out the drawing?You can upload the file to DropBox and I'll download it to my laptop but that does not mean I'll actually be able to open it. I have about three hours before I'm through for the day.  Time now is 12:30 p.m. on the east coast of the U.S.  Must be about 7:30 p.m. your time?
John Connor2016-01-22 18:32:57

Hi John,I've uploaded the file here...  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mpitf3we9aqrwlq/AAAZlGA_9E6mfEi4d68W0Rfga?dl=0It doesn't actually have to be sent out until later Monday, so we should be fine, if you wanted to look at it? I can still send it out as it is, but I would rather get it looked at first.I do occasionally need to insert data from other drawings, from different sources, so this could well be the issue.Let me know if you can take a look and send the file back after stripping it of crap. It would be much appreciated :-)ThanksPete

Once again you've caught me on my laptop.  I won't be back on my desktop until some time Sunday at the earliest.

Good Morning.I downloaded and opened your drawing.  As you said overkill, -purge and audit did not have any affect.  I kind of suspected they wouldn't and that is why I asked you if you had taken the last step which was WBLOCK.  You never replied.  Well your drawing had a ton of linetypes in it that were jettisoned during the WBLOCK command and the file sized dropped from 45MB down to just under 2MB.  You should be able to get the same results on your end.  Try it.  In the meantime I have to go dig out of 150mm of snow that feel last night.  Will check back later.  Good luck and have a sparkling day.No response?  OK.I'm shutting down my CAD computer then.  See ya.  Bye.
John Connor2016-01-24 15:40:01

John you hasty thing you! It's Sunday and I've been out with the family (hence the slightly long reply).OK, I shall try WBLOCK again and will see what effects it has. If you have been hassle free with it, then I can't see why I shouldn't have the same positive outcome!Do I need to set any specific parameters or doing anything in particular to get the desired results?P.s. Good luck with the snow! I've seen a bit of coverage on the news... looks pretty insane!
pizzle2016-01-24 17:50:26

The one thing I did was move all the geometry closer to 0,0 before executing the WBLOCK command.  That's it.We were spared the brunt of the storm.  Some places receiver upwards of 750mm of snow.

Update:  I've just performed the cleaning ritual again (including WBLOCK), and it's reduced in size! BUT, only to 42MB  :-(The crazy amount of linetypes are still loaded as well?!Headache coming on!!

The problem appears to be at your end.  Something is being introduced into the drawing that is bringing all the linetypes along for the ride thus overloading your drawing.

[QUOTE=John Connor]...purge and audit did not have any affect...[/QUOTE]Curious, I DL'd and ran audit / purge. File immediately shrank to 1.7MB (a LOT of unused ltypes).(Running BricsCad)

I think your problem is DGN linetype.What is your AutoCAD version? Read this if you use AutoCAD 2015. And this one if you use older version. 

I'm using ACAD 2014. The above links don't appear to working either??

AutoCAD DGN Hotfixhttps://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/AutoCAD-DWG-files-unexpectedly-increase-in-file-size.html

Only just go around to reading this. Thanks, I'll check it out