Families with nested families and their sizes

[mryan64]

We are trying to reduce the size of some of our more complex families and I seem to have run into an odd situation.  One of our family types are patient rooms that are fully adjustable (width, depth) and have visibility graphics options for certain equipment.  These wind up being 7 to 9 MB families.  In trying to reduce their size I started combining multiple nested families into one nested family.  Where possible I would take the geometry from smaller families and put it into the larger one (in effect eliminating some families), so basicaly taking nested family A and B and putting their geometry into nested family C.  I would then nest what I couldn't, so family D would get nested into nested family C.  This would result in less nested families for the host family to track.  However it turns out that my file went up a full MB when I did this.  Is there a reason this happens?  I would assume it would reduce the file size.  How does Revit track all the bytes?

[ryan.duell]

In each nested family, or the host nested family, did you Manage > Purge Unused after all of the combination to ensure the previous family instances were removed?

Thank you,

[mryan64]

Yes, I did that as soon as I moved geometry over.  It would result in a 10kb decrease in one instance but then a 50kb increase another time.  So not really following a pattern.

[ryan.duell]

Could you test doing a R > Save As > Family, and specify a new name for the family. 

Before you save it, open the Save As Options > Compact File.  Save the family as a new family with a new name; does the file fully compact at that point?

Thank you,