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Project data & BIM
About BIM-based management of attributes, schedules, templates, favorites, hotlinks, projects in general, quality assurance, etc.

Optimizing your own custom template

Anonymous
Not applicable
Hi everyone,
I finally have time to work on our custom project template. I started "cleaning up" our latest project (.pln file), which contains the latest version of our old template.

I deleted any project-specific element (walls, slabs, zones etc), so the only items left are empty layers, markers, views etc., then I saved it as project template.

The file size after the cleanup is still quite large (100Mb+): how can I further reduce it and optimmize the template?

Thank you!


Enrico
16 REPLIES 16
Anonymous
Not applicable
Did you delete the worksheets? - and 2D contents (annotations etc.) of detail windows, sections and elevations?
Anonymous
Not applicable
All sections and elevations are clean and empty.

I kept a dozen independent worksheets as part of our template, but at the moment they are empty as well. How much do independent worksheets influence the total size of the file?
Anonymous
Not applicable
Not a lot if they are empty. What about embedded libraries? Best to link to libraries or use bimserver libraries.
Run through all your attributes in the attribute manager and ensure they're all ones you need in the template and you don't have extraneous things like line types or fills imported from Autocad that you never use. I don't think that'll take so much space but you never know. It's good practice to clean it up anyway.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thank you for helping me.

I'll try and clean up as much as possible the attributes, and eliminate any embedded object (although there should be none, as far as I know...)
Anonymous
Not applicable
Enrico,

For each new release of ArchiCAD I recreate my office template from scratch so that I am not bringing in any unnecessary legacy data, the template for my office is approx 2Mb in size.

The process I follow is:
1- start new project using default template
2- delete all content & stories
3- delete all sections, elevations, interior elevations, worksheets, details, 3d documents, schedules, indexes, lists, info, sheets and sheet masters from navigation palette
4- delete all layers, layer states, pens, line types, fills, composites, profiles, materials, zones, cities, operation profiles using attribute manager
5- delete all loaded libraries and embedded library parts

You will now have a file that is as empty as you can as there are some linetypes, fills, sheet masters, sheets etc that cannot be deleted.

Save the file and now you can start rebuilding the template.

I would suggest creating a base template and a full template, the base template would contain only the attributes needed for all of your projects and would be the base from which you start new projects, the full template would contain all attributes that may be used. You can use the attribute manager to quickly import attributes from full template into your project as the need arises.

To rebuild the template it is essentially the reverse of the process used earlier:
1- import layers, layer states, pens, linetypes, fills, composites, profiles, materials, zones, cities operation profiles etc from your current template using the attribute manager.
2- load minimum libraries and embed any required library parts
3- import required schedules, lists, indexes, sheet masters

Best of luck,
Anonymous
Not applicable
sboydturner wrote:
Enrico,

For each new release of ArchiCAD I recreate my office template from scratch so that I am not bringing in any unnecessary legacy data, the template for my office is approx 2Mb in size.
This is excellent advice. We used to use Eric Bobrow's "Master Template". We had a few technical problems, and upon calling Graphisoft, they told us they could not help us with any technical problems with that template because they are not responsible for any after market templates. Eric migrates his template from as far back as V11, and that carries along many problems. It is wise to start anew every release, though it does take a little work.
Rick Thompson
Expert
Yet another opinion, worth absolutely what you pay for it:) I've been migrating a template file for many years, probably since AC 7 or 8. It is small (a few MB) and works great. A well developed Favorite file is worth a lot of effort, which is simply loaded. Seems a lot of effort to recreate a template form scratch each release. I just have not have any issues migrating a file over a long time. In fact, many of my plans were started in the 90's and I still use them with ease, and updated now to AC 16. I don't know, but I would not spend the time recreating from scratch every release, migrating has been fine for me. The Migration manager, Favorites, etc are great tools to keep files lean and clean.
Rick Thompson
Mac Sonoma AC 26
http://www.thompsonplans.com
Mac M2 studio w/ display
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Rick wrote:
I just have not have any issues migrating a file over a long time.
The same experience. There should be no problems at all migrating a template or other file forward, version to version.
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.3, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
One of the forum moderators
Anonymous
Not applicable
Graphisoft says otherwise, they recommend creating templates from scratch each version. That being said, our template is pretty small in file size and not very complex; I migrated my AC15 template to 16 with no apparent issues. For someone like Eric Bobrow though, who's template is massive and full of stuff, I think that's where the problems come, especially when migrating through 5 versions or so.

Graphisoft mentioned "legacy files", whatever that is.