Re: files that are large in size but contain few actual objects.

Yesterday I helped someone from the U.K. with a similar problem.  Fortunately his drawing was only 3.5MB so he could email it to me.  By the time I finished with it I had gotten the file size down to 163KB.  Yes, you read that right.  The file size DROPPED from 3.5MB to 163KB.

Now this was a very unique file because try as I might I could not initially find anything wrong with it.  I ran Overkill, -Purge (twice) and Audit.  No problems of any kind were detected.  I checked for Microstation linetypes and/or text styles.  There weren't any.

So, I used the old DXFOUT/DXFIN method.  Of course everyone knows when you DXFOUT a drawing the file size just rockets out of sight.  Now I had a DXF file of almost 23MB.  Yes, the file size increased almost 6 times!

Once I brought the dxf file in I ran the -Purge command again.  This command ran for so long that I thought AutoCAD had locked up but when it finally finished I was informed that almost 9700 unreferenced block definitions had been deleted.  9700!

I saved the file.  It's size dropped to 1.57MB.  I repeated the process a second time.  AutoCAD deleted 1 unreferenced block definition file.  I saved the drawing.  The file size was now 163KB.

As it turned out the original drawing came from an architect using an AutoCAD vertical product and the blocks were actually anonymous groups which I was able to recognize by looking at the unreferenced definitions list compiled by AutoCAD during the purging process.  All 9700 files started with *A followed by several numbers.

Now that's what I call good detective work.  It's also the kind of process one might have to go through to clean up a file.  As a last resort I could have just WBlocked everything out and inserted it into a new drawing but then I would not have known what caused the problem.

Case closed.


Edited by John Connor - 07.Mar.2014 at 13:06