Archicad File Size on Teamwork?

[felixsaw]

Hi all,

Archicad beginner here, and I have recently joined a practice based in a different city. We have been collaborating via Teamwork on a commercial / hospitality interior architectural fit out. 

We are currently at the early stage of Design Development phase ( a lot of block models to test massing and joinery look and feel) The file currently consist of a site contour mesh model, existing shell modelled, series of extrusions with interior fit out (furniture 3d models taken from our BIMcloud library), and our teamwork file is currently sitting at 2100mb sitting on the teamwork page, and the 750mb range when saved locally as a PLN .

Our file gets laggy every now and then, takes ages to load all elevations, sections and views on sheet.

I have been doing some reading on the forum re: file size control and auditing the file - and tried to remove some of the things from our file :

- Save site contour mesh at a different pln file and hotlink : the file size increased!
- Removing everything from the library
- Removing unused layouts
- Removing unwanted views (elevations, sections etc)
- Removing phase
- Removing furniture that were embedded 

After all these - the file size decreased from 770mb to 710mb... only managed to save 60mb.

A few questions :

1. Is it a good practice to hotlink my site contour mesh model into the building file instead of keeping it in the same file (even if it make file size bigger)

2. I have read some info online saying teamwork files usually will get significantly larger than a local PLN file.  Is that true? The post was originated at 2011 but the question wasn't addressed or answered.

3. What else can I do to audit the file size?

[NandoMogollon]

Hi Felix,

to your questions:

1. Is it a good practice to hotlink my site contour mesh model into the building file instead of keeping it in the same file (even if it make file size bigger)

It won't make much difference in file size of the hosting file. In Archicad the Hotlinked file is saved with the hosting file. 

2. I have read some info online saying teamwork files usually will get significantly larger than a local PLN file.  Is that true? The post was originated at 2011 but the question wasn't addressed or answered.

The true uncompressed size of a PLN file is very close to what shows up in BIMcloud. So Archicad and your PC/MAC is always loading the same amount of information regardless of the apparent size.

3. What else can I do to audit the file size?

If you are worried about File Size, which needs to be said is not the same as performance loss, Top 3 to review:

• Unused Objects and Images in your embedded libraries. including those from old AC versions and unused hotlinks
• unnecessary exploded or Xref DWG in your file
• Drawings in your Layouts set to manual update & those set to Auto update that are saved with the project file, these can increase the file size.

Hope this helps

[Lee Hankins]

We find detaching external files such as imported PDF’s and jpeg images helps speed the file up and also breaking hotlinks and reconnecting them when they need updating. I know that sounds a bit counter intuitive but it stops Archicad constantly searching for updates. We’ve noticed it’s also noticeably slower if the linked files are stored outside of the Teamwork/ BIMcloud server. 

[Algimantas Kuprenas]

For me biggest size consumers in files are:

1. Layouts - with store (Store drawing in project file - OFF)

2. 3D Documents in Project map - not sure why these takes up much space. Should be vector drawings so they are optimised.