AutoCAD Drawing Size - copy/paste

[walt.sparling]

Curious question for drawing database issues. When copying and pasting entities from one drawing in to another, it brings far more "stuff" with it than is selected. i.e. I have a clean AutoCAD 2013 drawing of 200k and I get another 7meg drawing from a consultant that is obviously bloated, but I only need to grab a small area of the drawing to update say a mechanical room or pad layout or size. I select the items I need and paste them in to my drawing. The items I need are probably less than 5-10k in size. Once these items are pasted in to my drawing BOOM, it blows up to 7meg because it brings in a bunch of unselected items.
and these items are typically unpurgable. I then typically use a Wblock all or dxfout on nasty ones to get it down to size.

I have written scripts and macros to deal with drawing cleanup and have even written an article on it, but what puzzles me is why this happens. Can anyone educate me on what is really happening and why?

[cadtag]

two reasons come to mind -- AECObjects and Styles, and DGNLinetypes with their associated cruft.

Best bet,if you just need to bring in dumb linework is to export the subconsultant's drawing to Acad -- even picking an older version if you like. After all, unless you're running the same vertical, the vertical information is not much use to you.

For DGN cruft, look into the Purge DGN tools available on the Adesk web site. Some from Adesk, and some are on Exchange.

[walt.sparling]

two reasons come to mind -- AECObjects and Styles, and DGNLinetypes with their associated cruft.

Best bet,if you just need to bring in dumb linework is to export the subconsultant's drawing to Acad -- even picking an older version if you like. After all, unless you're running the same vertical, the vertical information is not much use to you.

For DGN cruft, look into the Purge DGN tools available on the Adesk web site. Some from Adesk, and some are on Exchange.

Thanks for the reply. I know what it is bringing in and it has these things because it comes form an architect that gets it from a consultant, that sends it to our consultant, that sends it to us - we deal with the same architect and often have to clean their drawings - all are on straight AutoCAD 2013. The mess originally comes from a civil firm that uses a vertical. Maybe this is an Autodesk question, but if I pick 12 lines that are all the basic "continuous" linetype and no fonts or blocks are selected, why does AutoCAD feel the need to grab the entire database of support files, that includes, styles, linetypes, etc..? I know how to deal with it, and we do every day - I just can't see to get the other consultants or architect to consistently do it.

Note: I see something about copy/pasting and a DGNhotfix - I will look into the DGN Hotfix and see if that helps.

[cadtag]

And now you know why many people think of AEC objects as viruses. they propogate where neither needed nor wanted.

About all you can do is ExportToAutoCAD when you get the crufted up drawings in. My SOP is to keep everything I get from outside in a _Received folder, by date and submitter - and always left as-is, and anything I will use in my drawing is a copy/export in my working folders for that job.

Good luck!