The problem of very large drawing sizes
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Drawings with large sizes result in longer storage times and delayed drawing processes. Many people attribute this to the size of the drawings themselves, but in many cases it is due to the lack of standardization in the way they are drawn. A person with solid fundamental skills as a draftsman will not create drawings of excessive size. When dealing with large-sized drawings, have you considered the following issues? 1. Multiple duplicate lines on a single straight line. 2. When copying someone else’s drawing, failing to remove unnecessary layers – I once saw a drawing with nearly 20 layers, only 3 of which were thick solid lines, and none of those layers could be removed. It took me some time to modify all the layers using the format brush, and only then was it possible to delete 10 layers; of course, this reduced the file size significantly. 3. Do the drawings you create contain too many custom blocks? It’s best to use your own drawing sheets when drawing; even if you copy someone else’s work, only the layers are copied, not the blocks. I once created a file in Haichuan called \"Drawing Settings Commonly Used by Senior Engineers,\" and I was really surprised by it – it contained several sections, one of which was an A3-sized gear drawing; without drawing anything, the size of the drawing was already quite large. 4. Likes to post pictures and doesn’t care about their size. Of course, there are relatively few pictures inserted in CAD. 5. Text settings: Some drawings are copies of those from Japan or Taiwan, and they contain several different font types, which also increases the size of the drawings.
Turning off line width display while drawing can also increase the machine’s corresponding speed. Additionally: if a layer cannot be deleted, press Ctrl+2 to bring up the Design Center, where it’s easier to delete it (be careful not to delete something by mistake). Using the Purge command regularly can help reduce the file size. When copying someone else’s content, first set their layers to layer 0, then copy it over to the layer where you want to place it; this way, there will be no extra layers. Additionally, the naming and classification of layers should be systematic, so that when reviewing the drawings later on, one will still know what is stored on each layer.
Use single-line fonts (hztxt) for Chinese characters as much as possible; avoid using the Chinese fonts available in Windows, such as SimSun or HeiTi. This not only reduces the size of the drawings but also makes operations like moving and scaling faster.
A simple way to remove unnecessary elements from a drawing is to select the entire desired drawing as a block and use it to replace the original drawing; this is much simpler than using the purge command (since sometimes purge cannot remove everything completely)
I’ve learned a lot from the experience summaries posted above. Now my computer is faster, and even larger files can be opened quite quickly. Many of the good habits I used to have have been abandoned; I need to pay more attention to these things in the future.
Apart from using less weight for lines when drawing, I use the PURGE command. This will make the image smaller.