topic Re: Reduce project file size in Project data & BIM

Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:25:18 GMT

what are the ways i can reduce my project file size?

1)delete unused layers
2)delete unused favorites
3)delete unused materials
4)replace 3d trees with bitmaps

will the above methods help? if yes,
then what is the best method to identify & delete unused favorites,layers & materials?

thanks

Re: Reduce project file size

Srinivas — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:57:08 GMT

You can purge unused fills, layers etc. through Attribute Manager

you can acess it via Options > Element Attributes > Attribute Manager.

Did you check the compress file option in the Save options dialog? What is your project file size?

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:02:24 GMT

My file size is 28 mb.Will a compressed file help in faster generation of view?

Re: Reduce project file size

Erika Epstein — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:42:41 GMT

Purging unused attributes, that should be a last resort. Your file is not that large.

What are your computer specs?

Re: Reduce project file size

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:38:54 GMT

I'm with Erika: file isn't that big. Sounds more like an underpowered computer on the speed thing.

As for size, another option to reduce file size is to clear the checkbox for storing Navigator Preview data with the file - see attached.

Karl

Re: Reduce project file size

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:40:52 GMT

And yet another save space thing is to clear the checkbox for "Store Drawing in the Project File" in the Drawing settings for each placed drawing (and the Tool itself for subsequent drawings). See attached.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Tue, 25 May 2010 23:19:47 GMT

This sounds more like a question about the 3D model complexity than the base file size. The two are only very slightly related. You can have a tiny file that generates a huge model, and a small simple model with lots of detailed drawings can result in a large file.

If the model is too complex for the computer to manage whole you can use the marquee to reduce the extents of the model and layers to reduce how much of it is modeled. You can also reduce complexity by simplifying complex items like trees and such.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:30:22 GMT

I find that layouts can make the file very heavy.

If there are unused/unnecessary layouts in the project, try deleting them.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Fri, 28 May 2010 02:03:05 GMT

"I find that layouts can make the file very heavy."
Are you sure it's the layouts, not excess images/pdf's placed on them?
Anyway that's the way it seems here.
lec

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Mon, 31 May 2010 02:09:51 GMT

When I mentioned "layouts", I naturally meant having layouts with either views placed on them, or images (JPG/PDF/whatever).

Often during the working process, we may use layouts to set-up quick prints, and may forget about them after we have printed these layouts?

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:28:39 GMT

Gone through file size reduction recently myself. What I found in addition to the above comments is that you should check your embedded library.
If you are in V13 and have been creating library objects with the IFC (not sure if this was 2x3 or other) addon enabled, they save with a heap of IFC data attached and become very, very, large.

I have had a facade object which saved out as nearly 100meg. After disabling the IFC add-on and redefining the object it was under 1 meg!

Note: I believe this problem has been fixed in V14.

To check your embedded library you need to export it from the library manager and then browse the created folder by file size.

next biggest effect was by deleting layouts - we moved them into a layout dedicated file and linked them via pmk's (much faster than straight link but no one told me about the automatic drawing/layout tags! ...for another post).

I managed to reduce my 768meg monster to a svelte 100meg model file and a 150meg layout file.

good luck.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:26:49 GMT

Sorry to bump an old thread to ask a question but:

My problem is that the file has been showing error messages that it cannot be handled because of memory, but what I suspect as the cause is that I have transferred a lot of .dwg lines directly from AutoCAD and may have slowed the file. Is there some way to reduce the file size and make it faster (like purging of the 2D elements?)

My specs are written in my signature and I don't think it is too slow to handle several 2D lines.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:30:43 GMT

I've heard of dwg fills coming in as individual lines and dashes as segments of line but I reckon that'd account for a couple of meg at best.

How large is your file?

A couple of things to check:
Do you have a large embedded library? (see post above)
Do you have many layouts in the file?
Are the large images loaded into materials?
Have you tried a polygon count?
Do you get the error message on other machines?

Re: Reduce project file size

Barry Kelly — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 02:30:08 GMT

Rian wrote:
... but what I suspect as the cause is that I have transferred a lot of .dwg lines directly from AutoCAD and may have slowed the file. Is there some way to reduce the file size and make it faster (like purging of the 2D elements?)

There are line and fill consolidation tools that you can try.
They will convert multiple lines and fills into single lines/fills.

Barry.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:10:39 GMT

Barry wrote:
There are line and fill consolidation tools that you can try.

Sorry, but when you say line and fill consolidation tools, I don't really get what you mean. Are they innate tools within the programs? Or add-ons?

And if they are add-ons, do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:21:48 GMT

Angry wrote:
I've heard of dwg fills coming in as individual lines and dashes as segments of line but I reckon that'd account for a couple of meg at best.

How large is your file?

A couple of things to check:
Do you have a large embedded library? (see post above)
Do you have many layouts in the file?
Are the large images loaded into materials?
Have you tried a polygon count?
Do you get the error message on other machines?

Checked these prior to posting, actually.
I have no large embedded library. The funny thing is I have a lot of module and layout files and this is the only one that exceeds 50mb. (It is actually 60+mb to answer your first question.)

There are actually a considerable number of layouts, but nothing that is incomparable with the other files as I've said above. Actually I tried the method Karl Ottenstein outlined about un-ticking the checkbox for "Store Drawing in the Project File", and it reduced the filesize from more than a 100mb to what it is now.

No large images.

Sorry, but I do not know how to make a polygon count. Is there a command in 3D? Also, to outline how I determined that the 2D lines are what accounts for the large file size, I removed all except for the necessary modules, so the file only contains the actual skin of the building. (making a curtain wall detail actually)

The error occurs on other machines too. But I guess that wouldn't say much since all the machines here in the office are pretty much of the same specifications.

RZ

Re: Reduce project file size

Barry Kelly — Wed, 02 May 2012 09:33:21 GMT

Rian wrote:
Barry wrote:
There are line and fill consolidation tools that you can try.
Sorry, but when you say line and fill consolidation tools, I don't really get what you mean. Are they innate tools within the programs? Or add-ons?

And if they are add-ons, do you have any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.

Standard Archicad commands.
If you don't have them you may have to edit your Work Environment to add them.
Barry.

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Thu, 03 May 2012 02:00:24 GMT

Barry,

Did what you said, and although it trimmed the file for only a couple of MB's it made the file considerably easier to work with.

Thanks!

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 11:36:08 GMT

Hello
my files just keep growing.

below is a long narrative - which might be condensed to - Does anyone know how to get view sets from one file into a new file (new file made by merging originals etc) so that I can sort out what is probably a file corruption (which is probably proliferated into all the project base files)

Also if anyone knows of any diagnostic tool that can maybe guide me to a corrupt element in a file - that might be a quick solve

i've been using archiCad only for about 1.5 years with little training (ie online then paid for about 4 hours of webinar stuff) - so I'm hoping I'm making some fundamental error and someone can point the direction to the magic bullet!

Anyway narrative on actions so far .........................

I have checked compression, clicked off the box that stores the drawing in the settings box, deleted all spurious info , jpegs and dwg info.
cut out all old layouts of the current files (this did make a bit of difference)

then divided the file into individual buildings and site.. and spent along time hot linking them back together as necessary- and carried on working - but when I look back at the back ups now (this was done about 4 months ago) I can see that the resultant 4 files are actually all bigger - as in each individual file is bigger than the original so went from 1 x 900MB file to 4 x 1.1GB + files

ArchiCad 17 btw.

a couple of days ago - I changed all the insulation lines to fills and checked the saved size (went up 2K) then deleted them all together (size went up again 2k)
is there some kind of history save going on?

finally today I have stripped the coloured elevations out from one of the files - made its own file and hot linked info from the files back into each other again. (I did turn the store drawing boxes off initially but it makes no difference)
I though deleting so much info from a file should make it smaller - But same as above the two resultant files 1 just with elevations and hot links and 1 layout and the other with all the plans and sections in line work are both larger than the original... in fact the file with everything in it is 108373KB smaller than the new one that I deleted all the elevation info out off.

I can just about get the merge file thing sorted on these files -
did stories first and it was just 35MB then the layouts (straight up to 650MB - which is still better) but cant save all the view sets so they all end up being hotlinked back to original and need all the views on all the sheets setting up again.. (some are 2.2GB now and that will take some time)

thanks if you got to the end of all that info-rant you did well and any experience you can offer would be very much appreciated.!!!

Phixy

Re: Reduce project file size

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 08:45:04 GMT

Karl wrote:
And yet another save space thing is to clear the checkbox for "Store Drawing in the Project File" in the Drawing settings for each placed drawing (and the Tool itself for subsequent drawings). See attached.

what is actually doing this option unchecked or checked ?