XREF Mysteriously Growing in Size

Hello,

So I have this XREF that is the topo for many drawings. I don't remember the original size, maybe around 6 MB, and now it is 9.9 MB and nothing has been added to it. It bogs down all of the drawings it is Ref'd into. Drawings with it take around 5 mins to open, save, and close.

I ran drawing clean up, no ref's attached to it, purged everything, zeroed out the Z values for everything in the drawing. There are about 51,000 +/- objects in the drawing. I have also tried copying and pasting everything into a new drawing, but crashed CAD.

Thoughts?

Open the dwg of the xref while none of the receiving drawings are open on your computer, then run these commands one at a time. overkill, audit, and then -purge.

Which purge command did you use the first time? Did you try -purge. The hyphen in front is important. Follow the prompts in the command line. Purging regapps is particularly important. Of course, don't select to confirm each, you will be at it for days.

You might want to do the above commands on the drawing that is receiving the xref too.

Sometimes running the -purge command more than once will find other stuff to get rid of because of nested blocks and certain types of AutoCAD generated blocks.

There are other steps to take but I am not sure how to explain them. There has been a very good thread on this subject here recently that covers just about everything you could do. I'll see if I can find it.

There are about 51,000 +/- objects in the drawing.

Well there is your problem. Are the contours comprised of lots of little short lines?

Here is a much discussed solution that I just searched for, and ran across about six times, here on the forum.

1. Open the heavy cad file;

2. DXFOUT;

3. Open a new blank cad drawing, DXFIN;

4. Purge, -Purge (Regapps), audit and saveas.

I ran drawing clean up

What exactly is that?

, no ref's attached to it, purged everything, zeroed out the Z values for everything in the drawing. There are about 51,000 +/- objects in the drawing. I have also tried copying and pasting everything into a new drawing, but crashed CAD.

 

Thoughts?

Have you checked to see if it contains the DGN linetype bloat garbage, as described here: http://cadpanacea.com/node/411

Well there is your problem. Are the contours comprised of lots of little short lines?

We got the drawing from another firm. I always purge the drawing and copy everything into a new blank drawing.

The reason the file is so big is because, for example, all the linetypes have been exploded, which I don't know how that happened. Originally, the drawing was never this slow until recently, when it just starting bogging everything down.

I downloaded and installed the DGNPurge from Autodesk, but says that it cannot load the "assembly."

We got the drawing from another firm. I always purge the drawing and copy everything into a new blank drawing.

Purge will not get rid of the DGN linetypes that are currently buzzing around the CAD world...

I downloaded and installed the DGNPurge from Autodesk, but says that it cannot load the "assembly."

If you downloaded the ZIP file, make sure to "unblock" the ZIP file before extracting the components.

I think this and other important info are covered in the README file.

Purge will not get rid of the DGN linetypes that are currently buzzing around the CAD world...

 

 

 

If you downloaded the ZIP file, make sure to "unblock" the ZIP file before extracting the components.

I think this and other important info are covered in the README file.

I did unblock it and still no go.

Well, I don't know what to tell you.

It works fine here on 2013 on Win7.

That may not even be the problem with your file.. no way to know unless you run this routine.

Can you ZIP and post the drawing here or a hosting service (i.e.: Dropbox) so we can take a look?

So the same drawing is growing again. Since I last posted in this thread, the drawing was around 9MB and was 13MB as of yesterday. Today, it's 16MB. I opened the drawing in recovery, no errors. Audited it, no errors. Zeroed everything out. Ran -PU and purged everything including the RegenApps, which there were only 23 vs hundreds last time. I ran DGNPURGE and there was nothing. It took about an hour to open the drawing. I WBLOCK'd everything into a fresh drawing and am waiting....and waiting for it to finish. UGH!

Any additional thoughts? Thanks!

Did you run the OVERKILL command on the drawing? Maybe you have duplicate entities (ex. - lines) sitting on top of each other. You wouldn't notice them and purge would not bother with them.

Did you run the OVERKILL command on the drawing? Maybe you have duplicate entities (ex. - lines) sitting on top of each other. You wouldn't notice them and purge would not bother with them.

Yep. Nothing.

HOWEVER....one of the engineers E-transmitted a drawing that references this problematic drawing. She noticed that the file size was 7.5MB!!! WTF?!?! Upon opening, it only took 5 seconds to open versus an HOUR with the 16MB version. I copied that file from the zip file into our references folder and voila! Solved! ....for now.

Moral of the story: When in doubt, E-transmit. LOL

Question, any idea what could have changed with E-transmitting the file??

f@%$!!!! It is now 9.5MB!! WTF?!?!

Aaarggghhh!!!! :reallymad::reallymad::reallymad:

I'd volunteer to take a look at the drawing but I don't run Civil 3D. Maybe Tiger would be willing to look at it. Ask nicely....you never know.

I'd volunteer to take a look at the drawing but I don't run Civil 3D. Maybe Tiger would be willing to look at it. Ask nicely....you never know.

There's nothing 3D about it, other than the template used for the drawing is setup for C3D.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nbvhfqiq0x1ocs4/FCZA-SURVEY.dwg

Thanks ReMark! Much appreciated!

It says the file size is 16.3MB....oh boy! This may take a few minutes.

OK...tried opening in AutoCAD 2013 but it stopped at 46%. Not sure what's wrong.

You crashed my AutoCAD!

A second try at downloading and opening going just as badly. Stalled at 46%. I'm pretty sure the end result will be the same.

Sorry, I will be unable to look at your drawing Paul.

It says the file size is 16.3MB....oh boy! This may take a few minutes.

 

OK...tried opening in AutoCAD 2013 but it stopped at 46%. Not sure what's wrong.

 

You crashed my AutoCAD!

 

A second try at downloading and opening going just as badly. Stalled at 46%. I'm pretty sure the end result will be the same.

 

Sorry, I will be unable to look at your drawing Paul.

Oopps. I forgot to update the dwg in the DropBox.

Done. https://www.dropbox.com/s/nbvhfqiq0x1ocs4/FCZA-SURVEY.dwg

Just FYI, I'm running 2013 as well.

OK....I'll give it another try.

No luck. I'll have to try again tomorrow when I'm at work. My CAD computer there runs 2014 and the specs are a little better. Sorry.

OK....I'll give it another try.

Thanks again!

I managed to open it (~5 min) and that drawing is huge (250.000 elements). I don't see anything wrong (purging, auditing) with it and the size changes you observe are, in my opinion, down to buggy

[*] autocad. I did some tests and i.e. purging a small drawing can inflate the size!

I tried to save it to 2004 format and it's slooow - I killed autocad after ~10 minutes.

I also made a test drawing containing 350.000 elements - and guess what? It's 9.8Mb

I'd suggest to split the survey into xrefs (elevation lines, plans, etc.) - that might help to manage that monster.

[*] full of unexpected features