Why is this folder so huge in size?

[shallmark]

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD Plant 3D 2013 - English\R19.0\enu\Support\ToolPalette\Images

I have 155,055 images in this folder totaling over 24GB of my hard drive.  Why?  It appears to be BMP files of all my supports but duplicated thousands of times.  Are they ok to delete?  24GB is a lot of space for duplicated images with randomly assigned names.

Please advise.

[shallmark]

...and I just noticed Palettes/Images is 34GB in size.  58GB total used by duplicated BMP files.  There are 223,108 items in that folder.

[Peter_Jansoone]

as a reference : these folders are

2.4 GB 16.000 files

2.24 GB and 14.000 files

on my system, still large enough ...

[dave.wolfe]

Numerous posts already on this topic. Turn of dynamic tool palettes. PLANTDYNAMICTOOLPALETTE disable. Use the spec viewer to inset items.

[shallmark]

That's not a really good trade off.  The DTP is a good thing.  Can they be routinely "cleaned out" without major issues?

[PeterQuinn · Accepted solution]

Yes. You can get rid of the old files.

[lukecoxon3d]

Hello Peter

I don’t believe this is a suitable solution from Autodesk. And I would like the Solution to be removed so this thread can continue.

Even after deleting the old Palette folders that are created by AutoCAD (Why can’t it overwrite the existing palettes and associated images instead of making a new set, or why can’t it just add the new or altered palettes / images instead of rewriting something that hasn’t changed?)

I have 10 Gig in my Palette directory and over 69,000 image files even after deleting the old palette directories. See image attached showing only the latest palette folders in red. All prior have been deleted. 

The problem is the "Palettes" and "Images" directories that also keep building, and on top of that there is another "Images" folder inside the "Palettes folder with 43,000 images in it. (coincidentally double the qty of images in it as the Images folder one level above?) What is the purpose of the double handling of these images? There's 21,500 files that are instantly unnessesary right there.

Can you please inform us how to accurately and simply "Get rid of the old files" without deleting any original palette data that has not changed?

The reason why this is such a big issue, is that after serious testing of our network, we have dicovered that the slowness of P3d upon opening, Switching projects, switching specs etc is directly linked to the quantity of image and palette files it needs to load. In 2 locations...The Plant 3d Library and ...you guessed it the Tool Palette directory. You can easily prove this by downloading a process monitor and watching the shear qty of files from these locations that P3d chugs away at opening.

Our Testing was on 3 different machines, doing the following tasks.

Time taken to load P3d looking at catalogue on the server. 

Time taken to load P3d looking at copy of catalogue C drive. 

Time taken to load P3d looking at a stripped down copy of catalogue on c drive.  (removed all unused catalogues, which removed approx 3000 files)

Time taken to load P3d looking at the same stripped down copy of catalogue on the server.

End Result = moving the palette and library files locally made no difference. But removing the quantity of files in these locations, no matter how small they are, made a massive difference. 

I know how to cull the Plant 3d library which has helped, but can you please advise us how to cull unwanted / unused files from the tool palette directory without deleting the wanted / used? And which one of the 3 x image directories can i deleted?

Regards

[dave.wolfe]

The real issue is that the dynamic tool palettes use randomly generated file names. If they would use the script names instead of guids for the image file name, I think their would be significantly less images generated as they would be duplicated.  All the palettes would reference the same images instead of creating their own.

[lukecoxon3d]

Hello PeterQuinn

Can you please inform us of a quick / accurate way to "get rid of the old files".

I dont believe this is a solution, as there is no way of determining which images are currently in the palette.

Dave.Wolfe also raised the following...

The real issue is that the dynamic tool palettes use randomly generated file names. If they would use the script names instead of guids for the image file name, I think their would be significantly less images generated as they would be duplicated.  All the palettes would reference the same images instead of creating their own.

Is any one at Autodesk out there to give a response to this????

A response would be great.

[PeterQuinn]

Yes, this is something we can look into. 

In the meantime, you can certainly remove files older than a couple of days. There's no real harm if you remove ones in use as they will be regenerated next time you switch specs.

[siem.vaneyndeJ5G6C]

Today we are 6 years later, and I still have the same issue.

Any solution to this?