Ballooning Design File Size
I am not aware of any bugs that would cause this. File size is affected by many factors, including the complexity of the geometry involved, and your workflow. Some features create "geometry caches" so that they can continue to compute even if there are errors. For instance: Combine caches all the tool bodies used. If you have lots of Combines, and the tool bodies for those features are complex, that can add to file size. It's not the only cause, just an example. What happens if you save a copy of that design, and turn off design history? Does the file size come down?
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
A couple of points:
- I don't know if a history-free version will meet your needs or not. I only suggested it to try to determine whether whether my theory about cached bodies being responsible for the file size was correct. It looks like it might be correct, based on your results.
- So, the second question is: Is your design workflow good, and the bloat from the cache is just the cost of a good workflow, or are there other ways to achieve the same results with a different workflow?
- Is file size is something to be worried about? 118MB is not really that large. Larger file sizes will affect upload/download times, and even save times to some extent, but, if those are not a real problem for you, then I would not be too concerned about file size.
- If you are interested converting to a direct modeling design, that can be a valuable way to reduce complexity. Just understand that, once this conversion happens, it reduces your ability to edit the design. If your design is "done", that can be a useful strategy.
- " I have 28,902 items in the browser list. These cannot be viewed or modified - the are like phantom features.". That is not too far off the mark, to be honest. Those are "direct modeling features". There is a limited ability to edit these kinds of features. I personally feel that these feature are not worth having, and I wish we would not create them when turning off history. You don't want to delete those features (delete will try to delete the geometry associated with that feature), you want to "dissolve" them (which means: getting rid of the browser entry, but keeping the geometry). You can dissolve as many of them at once, by selecting a range in the browser using shift-click.
Jeff Strater
Engineering Director
If I interpreted correctly, turning of design history will delete/remove/dissolve the geometry cache of old tool bodies?
If at the time I had used those tool bodies in the combine menu, I had checked the "remove tools" would that have happened during run time?
If I am trying to model some fancy ironwork, let's say a simple version of that is something like this with bevelled curves.:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTG2-20ohKR4kBZM-8cDA8XV8dqgcQFsJqa4A&s
The above would only have two to three z coordinates, but it would have complex x y stroking. Solid modelling for this is already hard enough and results in some weirdness around corners.
When it gets even just a little bit fancier (older ironwork can go so much more ornate than this) things gets intense very quickly
Is fusion just unsuited to modelling this stuff? More creative 3D sculpting software are weaker at hard-edged geometry so it feels like an annoying inbetween problem.
I am ending up with 600mb files per component...
I want to cnc this, not turn it into an animation so that's why I went to fusion.
