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how do I reduce file size ?


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I have a 3D model that is now over 450 meg in file size and I'm asking for tips on how to reduce the file size. My iMac is still handling it fairly well, but I figure if the file size were smaller it would render faster. I have deleted a few imbedded pdf images, and ran the "purge unused" command, but that only reduced the file size by about 20 meg. What takes up all the space ? Wall styles ? record formats ? textures ? 3D symbols ? door and window PIO ?

This model is just for rendering, and doesn't have construction drawings, sections, details or multiple drawing sheets.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Vectorworks does not use any automatic compression in its file format, so our files end up pretty large. However, just reducing file size doesn't always correlate directly with speed, it depends what is making the file the size it is.

If you zip that file and it is significantly smaller for instance, then that complexity is likely not something you'll be able to remove. If it doesn't shrink much then usually the size is from uncompressed images or PDF files.

Speed in that case can normally be increased by simply turning classes or layers off that are not being used, even if the file is still quite large.

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One thing that may help is to convert more complex geometry into generic solids.

This can reduce the file size quite a bit and also improve rendering speed.

That being said, this would only be a feasible option if you do not have to update the model/objects any further, otherwise you could try this out on a copy of your file so that you still have the original for updating.

As Jim already mentioned, file size does not always correlate with rendering speed.

You may also want to check your render settings, especially since things changed from VW2015 to VW2016 and seemingly small changes can sometimes have an enormous effect on rendering speed/time.

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  • 2 years later...
On 3/23/2016 at 10:21 PM, Jim Wilson said:

Vectorworks does not use any automatic compression in its file format, so our files end up pretty large. However, just reducing file size doesn't always correlate directly with speed, it depends what is making the file the size it is.

 

Just stumbled on the following issue:

Some of my favorite library files have more than 450 mb now. I have tried to make these a link from a server directory for having it in the automatic server backup. This slows down the importing and replacing of symbols to an inacceptable speed. I ended up in having all favorites as local files on the local harddisk, doing a manual backup from time to time. So the size is really a big problem when working on network.

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Because our library is very large, we synchronize it from the server to the individual computers. Vectorworks then accesses the local workgroup library. This works very well, but only speeds up the program start.
Very large files are no problem at all for Vectorworks, as long as they don't fill the RAM completely.
For example, hidden geometry has no effect at all on the display speed.

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On 1/31/2019 at 1:25 AM, doberman69 said:

What about creating aspects of the file in a separate file and bringing it in as a external reference. Like in Autocad.

I find pulling Elevations out of the base file and to a lesser extend sections helps greatly with file size.

Plus you can strip the reference  back to the shell of the building.

 

Plans and model stay one file for easy of working.

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On 2/4/2019 at 11:39 AM, herbieherb said:

we synchronize it from the server to the individual computers. Vectorworks then accesses the local workgroup library.

 

I have tried to use workgroup files instead of favorite files. It speeds up the process of selecting and importing symbols via drag and drop tremedously. But when it comes to replacing symbols I find that symbols can NOT be replaced by symbols from workgroup files. Is it correct that the Replace... button of the OIP does only select objects from open files, vectorworks libraries or favorite files ?

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