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

[KalvinK]

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

[KalvinK · Accepted solution]

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. 

[insideru]

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.

[KalvinK]

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

[insideru]

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?