Unusually large project sizes...

[FWSchreck]

Hello:

I am in the process of using Revit Architecture 2009 to edit a series of plan templates for our office. A typical healthcare bathroom layout, originally 6MB and containing 71 total objects, has ballooned to 23MB in size after editing.

Edits include using "Transfer Project Standards", and removing obsolete Object Style sub-categories.

I have used "purge unused" and "compact file when saving" options to reduce the file size, to no avail.

How can I get this project back to a reasonable file size?

[sthedens]

That's not unusually large... yet. Our Middle School project that includes Arch and MEP is 205MB.

[dgreen.49364]

Welcome to the mystery of the incredible swelling file. Some time back, I attacked a large Revit project, about 150 mb, in an effort to reduce the file size. When I was done, it was probably at 170 mb.

For some reason, Revit files only get bigger, never smaller. That's right! Bigger. BIGGER! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH...

I asked the question when this occurred and nobody was able to tell me why the file size gets bigger...it just does.

Compacting a central file does work, though.

[DaveP]

Try a Save As. That often cuts a file size down considerably.
I believe that Revit keeps its Undo history with the file. Even after a save there is some historical information in the file. Doing a Save As flushes out that information and often reduces the file size.

[NKramer]

This happened with our template.

In an effort to figure out what it was that ballooned the file size I went back and deleted all views, content, schedules, etc in mass (just right click delete). And the file size hardly changed.

Then I went back and removed/ deleted all fields but one from each schedule, then deleted the schedule. Then deleted project parameters, then the families, sheets and finally views. This time the file size was back down to where it started. It seems like you have to delete things in Revit's order (whatever that may be) otherwise it holds onto the data base entry and thus the file size doesn't really change.

No one has been able to confirm or deny this, but its what I have seen in practice.

On a side note: We compress our files at least weekly and replace the central file (take a local and save-as over the central) at least monthly. This seems to keep the file size way down. I only wonder what it would be if we had been doing this for the durration of the project rather than just the last few months....

Nick

[FWSchreck]

As an experiment, using the 23MB toilet room template, I did the following:


Made a new group containing only the walls, doors, plumbing fixtures and specialty equipment.
Using the "Save to Library" feature, saved the group as a new project. The new project was 1.4MB in size.
Did a "Transfer Project Standards" from the original 23MB file into the new file, and the new project ballooned back to 23MB.


Is there any way to determine the data sizes of the various components within a project?

[NKramer]

Try transferring project standards one item at a time. If you watch the file size after each transfer then you should be able to see the amount that each item contributes to file size. After that its probably just going to be an item by item issue (one at a time copy/ paste items between project or delete and see what that does).

Its not an easy issue. In our case I went back and rebuilt the template from scratch and the file size remained the same (15 megs). So that was acceptable. I don't think that 23 megs is really acceptable for an individual room template on any platform...

Nick

[bhron_d]

Don't know if this is the correct forum for this question, but it has to do with large Revit files, so here goes. I get CAD dwgs from the architect (from Revit) and when I xref them into my plot files I end up with files that are 30-40 MB each. I've tried a number of things to get the size down, but the work-around I'm using is pretty time-consuming (and I have over 100 sheets that need to be recreated). What I'm doing is saving and exporting the layer states, then wblocking out everything from model space into a new drawing, reimporting the layer states, and pasting the titleblock and viewports from the original drawing back in. I am also running -purge, regapps and -purge, materials which deletes a lot of stuff. I end up with 1-2 MB files from 30 or 40 MB files. But this is slow - anyone out there know something quicker? I'm running CAD 2008. Thanks.

[NKramer]

Don't know if this is the correct forum for this question, but it has to do with large Revit files, so here goes. I get CAD dwgs from the architect (from Revit) and when I xref them into my plot files I end up with files that are 30-40 MB each. I've tried a number of things to get the size down, but the work-around I'm using is pretty time-consuming (and I have over 100 sheets that need to be recreated). What I'm doing is saving and exporting the layer states, then wblocking out everything from model space into a new drawing, reimporting the layer states, and pasting the titleblock and viewports from the original drawing back in. I am also running -purge, regapps and -purge, materials which deletes a lot of stuff. I end up with 1-2 MB files from 30 or 40 MB files. But this is slow - anyone out there know something quicker? I'm running CAD 2008. Thanks.

Are they exporting the view or the model? If you are looking at the model that makes sense. Try having them export out to 2004 or earlier format and uncheck the Xref views on sheets box. That should dump out a lot of the 3d elements.

Nick