How to reduce drawing file size?

Tips that can help improve your CAD efficiency:

1. Save your drawings to the latest version in your daily drawing work.
2. Only create blocks when it is necessary; If the block is exploded when pasted, remember to clean the redundant block data.
3. Do not use other patterns to fill when you should use Solid Fill; Do not explode the hatch pattern
4. Do not use plugins that generate many anonymous blocks, layer filters, etc.

We can’t guarantee that every follow the above tips, so it’s better to check big size drawings we receive from others. If there are redundant data that make the file big in size, we can reduce the file size using the following method.

1.Use Purge command to clean orphaned data

Enter PU, then press Enter, the Purge dialog box would pop up, as shown in the following picture,

We don’t have to purge all those data because you may use certain blocks, linetype or layers in the future. I usually purge block data and check the “Purge Zero-length geometry and empty text objects” and “automatically purge orphaned data”.

2. Use plugin or manually purge the redundant data

We may need plugin if you are using lower version of CAD.

Or you can skip the idea of plugin and manually enter the following in the command line to purge DGN line styles:

(dictremove (namedobjdict)”ACAD_DGNLINESTYLECOMP”)

Then press Enter, if it shows “nil”, then there are no DGN line style; if it shows otherwise, then the DGN line styles have been purged.

3. Check and recover drawings

When we get drawings from others, it’s better to open it using Recover command or Audit command, this may not reduce the file size, but it can at least reduce the error occurred.

Some people like to copy the new drawing or use the drawing as a block to reduce the file size, but this method obviously doesn’t apply to drawings with layout.