Reduced file size from 20 MB down to 1 MB using Wblock. How?

[applee]

I'm still quite new to Autocad (less than a months experience) so bear with me. I got three floor plans from someone about 15 MB a piece. In them were single blocks of the entire floor plan, with multiple blocks nested within. After adding my portion to it the files were around 20 MB. Since each file was now sluggish and slow, I researched and found Purge, Audit, etc..

Nothing seemed to change the file size by much except Wblock --> Entire Drawing. I can't quite wrap my head around what exactly this command does because it seems like everything is still in the file. Could someone shine some light as to how this could bring the file from 20 to 1 MB ?

[Bob_Zurunkle]

Not sure, other than that some unnecessary objects were left behind -- perhaps markers in a registry for items no longer in the file...

[rkmcswain]

DWG files can also store non-graphical information, some useful and needed and some is pure bloat. There is no way for someone here to know what exactly was not carried over to the new drawing, unfortunately.

[drjohn]

Did this file perhaps start life as a DGN (Microstation) file?  WBLOCK is the accepted way (other than a DGNFix that ADSK released) to rid DWGs of unwanted DGN linetypes.

Regards,

DJ

[dgorsman]

In more generic terms: WBLOCK is used to create a DWG file to use as a block; typically this is a small collection of lines, arcs, attribute definitions, etc. to create a re-useable symbol.  Using WBLOCK on the entire drawing is a very old trick to create a new drawing file with only the content selected and without any hidden content or associated data.  It still works quite well with basic drawing entities but can cause problems when dealing with more intelligent objects which expect certain other data to be present.

[applee]

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@DrJohn wrote:

Did this file perhaps start life as a DGN (Microstation) file?  WBLOCK is the accepted way (other than a DGNFix that ADSK released) to rid DWGs of unwanted DGN linetypes.

Regards,

DJ

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As I continue to look this up, I suspect this is what the problem was. I was looking for a DGN hotfix earlier but couldn't find any for 2010. But Wblock seemed to do the trick just fine. Thanks for all the responses guys.