topic Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules??? in Documentation

HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:51:17 GMT

Hi, I hope this is the right place to post this, sorry if not to the mods.

I've followed all steps I could find for reducing file size, but my empty template file is still 220,000KB. I'll be using nearly 1GB per every 2 projects in that case (with one backup), a bit too much indeed. My embedded library is 37MB and I'm trying to trim that down, but I'm more concerned with the remaining 183,000KB. I started deleting things willy-nilly in a saved version of the template and found that deleting all of my schedules brings MASSIVE reductions in the file. Deleting them reduced my file size by 130,000KB, over half of the file. Most of the schedules I have in there are very basic door and window schedules, many adapted from the out-of-box ArchiCAD template. This basic square footage schedule (below) clears up nearly 10,000KB in my file when I delete it. Does anyone have an idea as to why my schedules might be using so much file storage? I'm bewildered.

Kalvin

Operating system used: Windows

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

JeffH — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 16:03:44 GMT

Do you have a lot of info already placed on your plans/model that is being scheduled, in your template file?

Deleting all schedules reduced my Larger project template from 53,764kb (52.5mb) down to 49,913kb (48.7mb)

The only things that appear on any schedule when a new project is created are 2 walls. nothing else is pre-created in plan/model.

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 16:13:49 GMT

Jeff,

Unfortunately no, the template file has virtually nothing in it. There is nothing in the model. It's weird.

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 16:25:19 GMT

Jeff, I should add however, that I have drawn plans in the template file prior and have now deleted everything out of it. While I was developing my template, I did one project at a time so that I didn't have to keep on sending updates back to a separate template file. I probably made like 3 or 4 residential projects in here before setting it aside and using it as a proper template. I'd bet that is significant to my issue. I just didn't think it would be this hard to clear unwanted data out of the file now. Open and repair does very little for me.

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

Lingwisyer — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:17:33 GMT

Might you have schedules that have not regenerated since the last project, and hence contain legacy information?

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

Scott Boyd Turner — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 03:54:02 GMT

Kalvin,

you should start a template by editing one of the Graphisoft templates and bring in views / attributes /schedules etc you need rather than starting from previous file otherwise you tend to get significant bloat as you've discovered.

Scott

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:12:37 GMT

Lingwisyer,

I just regenerated all schedules, no legacy information appears to be retained; however, this is almost certainly what is occurring. Your comment made me realize that the schedules I use the most frequently are the schedules that contribute the most to the bloat in my file size. However, all of them are completely empty and up-to-date now. And I've unchecked "store in project" on all of my views. I just wish there was a way that I could manually force the file to let go of that legacy information... But I might just have to start from scratch and tediously import everything...

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:15:43 GMT

Scott,

In a perfect world, yes that'd be the way to do it. However that would have been extremely impractical for me at the time. I've seen mods in this forum say that creating a template the way I did is a fine approach to use. But now it seems the situation may be beyond fixing and I'll have to start a new file and meticulously import everything like you are suggesting.

Betreff: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

runxel — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 16:46:53 GMT

If even "Open & Repair" does not seem to help somethings deeply off indeed.

I'd just sent the file in with the support. They can check it or will send it to Budapest directly for deeper investigation. Might help the devs, too, to explore potential bugs.

Betreff: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 18:30:22 GMT

Perhaps I'll do that.

With no viable fix, I started importing everything into a new template file this morning. It's a pain and might take a half or full days' worth of work, but it'll be worth it. At my worst the file was 250,000KB. It's looking like I'm going to be able to get it down to 60,000. Should save a lot of money on file storage in the future...

Once I'm done, I might send my "identical" files to support to show them the issues I experienced. Who knows if they'll investigate, but at least I can let them know about it.

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 19:13:10 GMT

To close this thread:

No viable solution was found. The schedules appear to be storing some kind of legacy information that cannot be purged. Options therefore are to create a new template file and export attributes, favorites, etc. AND don't forget to use Interoperability>Merge>Merge from File. It's taken me several hours but I am almost done. My file was 250,000KB at it's worst, it is still under 60,000KB at the moment. It's probably not just the schedules that were retaining legacy information from previous projects in the background.

I expounded all reasonable means, including Open and Repair to ensure there was nothing in the model actively causing the issue, or existing that I could purge by my own means. Perhaps the Graphisoft developers could have found more information in the code of the actual files and manually deleted it. But it beats me as to why this was happening.

Mods in this forum before have suggested that it is fine to create a template out of previous projects, but I have come to find out that IT IS NOT FINE. Archicad files may have an issue with storing legacy information that does not need to be stored. Luckily this current method of exporting attributes etc. into my new template file will still save me time in the end. There is no way I could have maintained a separate template earlier through all of the changes I was making daily.

I may report my findings to Graphisoft Support once I'm done, if they care.

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

insideru — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:40:32 GMT

Just want to confirm that this is indeed the issue. Doing the above (around 19 Schedules and 2 Indexes) reduced my template's file size from 230MB to 56MB.

Definitely something wrong there.

Cheers for the discovery.

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 17:28:57 GMT

Insideru,

Nice! Glad to hear I'm not going crazy. I just sent an email to support@graphisoft to report the issue, with this thread linked. Hopefully they'll be able to come up with some sort of fix. I can already see my template file start to increase for no reason as I navigate around the schedules during miscellaneous testing... Trying to do most of my testing in a separate file from now on...

Kalvin

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

insideru — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 00:46:56 GMT

Not only that, but here's another one. What if all my(probably yours too) 300 to 600MB files are that big because of this bug? I'm so curious i'm gonna test right now!

LE: False alarm. 342MB before, 328MB after deleting like 65 schedules and bout 7 indexes.

LE2: Same file, after deleting all 3D elements: 240MB. After deleting all layouts: 108MB. After deleting all worksheets and details: 67,7MB. Finally, deleting same 65 schedules and indexes: 47,2MB. After deleting embedded library stuff: 30,4. Finally, all attributes: 26,7. This is the lowest you can probably get. Weird, this time it behaved entirely normal (at least imho).

PS: All of the above tests are done on the new AC28.1 (B4001). Maybe they fixed something in this update?

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

Kelly at Kanvi Homes — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:58:14 GMT

You're not the only one with a large file due to schedules.

I examined one of our recent jobs, a typical 2 story home with a finished file size of 345,138kb. I spent an entire afternoon deleting elements from this file one at a time to see the effect on file size. The 91 schedules took up the largest percentage of the file size at 154,862kb. I also found that the 8 project indexes took up 46,102kb. Thats a combined total of 58% of the file size!

I'd be really interested to know why these take up so much space and how to get rid of the legacy info.

The link to my post on this topic is here

Project Indexes and schedules significantly increa... - Graphisoft Community

Re: HUGE file size because of... schedules???

KalvinK — Fri, 30 May 2025 19:44:52 GMT

To update after a long while, I did report the issue to Graphisoft and they confirmed it is a bug where schedules and indexes can store unnecessary legacy information. They did not give me a timeline or necessarily a promise of a fix, but the developers have been notified about it and are "looking into it".