Drawing file size 1

[sirbartoo]

I have an entire directory of drawing files that are 9,10,11 meg. If I open one of the files and do a "save as" to another name, the file size drops down to 300k. Has anybody ever seen this? It does not seem to be block related. The format.slddrt is also reasonable size. I am in SolidWorks 2006.

 

[EEnd]

What you are seeing is not unusual. Most of the reduction in size is the result of writing out a new version of the file. SolidWorks files are Microsoft OLE files and they can end up with dead space within them.

There are programs to automatically clean a directory of files. EcoSqueeze is one of them; I think unfrag is another. They are 3rd party programs, and SolidWorks’s stance is if one of them eats your files, they are not going to help you fix them.

That said I do not remember seeing anyone post here that their files have been damaged.

Eric

 

[sirbartoo]

Do you have any idea what could cause the dead space, so I might avoid this in the future?

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

The only way to avoid that is to switch operating systems!

The "dead space" is caused by the way Windows creates files. I believe the correct term is "shadow data" and is part of the "Microsoft Storage Structure" (or something like that).

All you can do at this time is to use Unfrag or EcoSqueeze frequently. Even then as soon as you open and work on a file, the shadow data will be created again.

 

[fcsuper]

There is another way to deal with this. The issue was reduced in SolidWorks 2007 SP 3.0 and higher. So, if you can, upgrade.

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group