Unexplained Spike in File Size

[DanielleAnderson]

Here's the situation, I'm wondering what happened and would love some suggestions:
I have a revit model that is about 9.6 megs. It is a 10,000sf building sitting on a site that is linked in as a separate revit model. There are also a couple of autocad drawings linked in. We are still in schematic design so that tells you about how much detail there is.
I needed to create a specific set of drawings for the Master Use Permit so I did a save-as (to keep the record of my old model) and changed the sheets around, adjusted views, etc. and all of a sudden my model is 42 megs. All I added was text and dimensions.
Any ideas as to why this has happened? I even went through and purged unused and I still can't get the file size down to where it was.

Thanks in advance! :?:

[stuntmonkee]

load any new families, or create any new groups?

There has to be something other than dims and text. . . .

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Did anyone do any renderings/animations/flythroughs and save them internally? Any additonal images loaded as part of the Master Use Prmit submission?

[DanielleAnderson]

There have been a couple of families loaded, but that was after the spike in file size and quite honestly, once it was at 42 megs, it hasn't really increased, even with the extra families loaded in.
THere have been a couple of renderings done but not saved internally, I never do that.
The only other thing I can think of (and herein probably lies the problem): is yes, Dimitri, I did add some photographs for the MUP, but when I did that, the file increased to 86 megs, so I ended up making a separate revit file for that drawing and eliminated that sheet. I just went into File>Raster Images and it lists all these files but says there are 0 instances of them. When I deleted them (even though there were 0 instances) and then saved the file, it climbed back up to 86 megs, so obviously that wasn't a good idea.

[cmahoney]

Try a Save as... to create a new file. You should see some file size reduction if you deleted elements from the project prior to doing this.

If this problem persists and you would like us to look at the file, please open a Support Request (http://www.autodesk.com/supportrequest).

[sbrown]

purge and look at the decals, sometimes cad files with images, produce attached decals for some reason

[Martin P]

I have noticed this before myself. I think once you save again once or twice it goes back down. Never got to the bottom of it, but I suspected at one point windows was reporting it wrong or something like that. We had files treble, then go back down?? weird.... could be dodgy family, but it would have to be a big one!

[Wes Macaulay]

Occasionally I see files that when saved, approximately double in size, then drop to their original size on the next save, etc. There must be a technical reason for this, but it hasn't caused any problems as far as I have seen.

[DanielleAnderson]

purge and look at the decals, sometimes cad files with images, produce attached decals for some reason

Okay--Scott wins the prize for good detective work. That solved the problem, now I am back down to a tidy 10.3 megs.

Thanks everybody! 8)

[Dimitri Harvalias]

Danielle,

Has the file load/save time increased dramatically since it increased in size? SometimesI find that file sizes are just not reported correctly in Windows and next time you open things up all is well. Not sure why and Mr. Bill doesn't have to tell us :screwy:

EDIT: oops, too late

[DanielleAnderson]

Well, all is well now and I'm not sure I can technically blame those nice folks at Microsoft (must be nice, my aunt works there). :)

[sbrown]

Danny P in our office found this on one of his projects that had site dwgs with huge images in them. Shot his file up to 140mb. Not sure why they would go to decals. Your post was quite timely, Danny had presented this issue 5min. prior to your post.

[dysart]

purge and look at the decals, sometimes cad files with images, produce attached decals for some reason

Scott,

Your response to this tread really helped me trouble shoot a "for no apparent reason"
large file. After purging 4, ? decals, my schematic file went from 57 Meg down to 8.

I had done a total purge of unused (which I didn't really want to do) and got a test file down to less than 5 meg.

Thanks,

Greg Dysart, AIA