File Size Inflation

People have been commenting about the inflation of file sizes with SW04. Ed Eaton pointed out that SW now saves Parasolid "snapshots" of the model as you add features. Since my files were reaching truly outrageous proportions, I decided to do a little EcoSqueeze testing to see how much I could save. I tried three files--big, medium, and small, just like Goldilocks. File sizes are in KB

File Original Default -Preview -Display -Parasolid Papa 387995 120163 120084 118523

3699 Mama 5915 2793 2730 2146 976 Baby 224 104 91 84 71

As expected, from Ed's description, complex files bloat the most, 32X in my case. I would submit that SW has gotten carried away with trading file size for speed.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Reply to
Jerry Steiger
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Jerry,

And how hard would it be for them to put user definable controls in there that would allow use to "CHOOSE" (a word SW doesn't understand) to turn this off. Or maybe to control the upper limits of this "autobloat" feature.

It's the same type of thinking that has service packs eating up 600mb of disk space on the "C" drive every time you install one. Some people just don't have their machines set up in a way that makes this OK.

Regards

Mark

proportions,

Reply to
MM

Yes, I've noticed the "bloat"; however, the root cause is still unclear to me.

If you want to see it in action, try the following:

  1. Make note (via Windows Explorer, etc.) of the file size of any uncompressed "legacy" part you may have from SolidWorks 2003 or earlier.

  1. Open the file in SolidWorks 2004 and do nothing other than to save it as a copy - converted to the latest native format.

(Just the conversion adds noticeably to the file size.)

  1. If the part's feature history and sketches are relatively few and simple, it's interesting (albeit shocking) to recreate them from scratch in 2004. Then the impact of "bloat" is most evident!

I think the reason a marathon runner straps a diver's weight belt around his waist is in order to run faster, isn't it?

Is all the new native file baggage really necessary?

Per O. Hoel ______________________________________________________________________________

Reply to
Per O. Hoel

Jerry,

The way your message is displayed on my NG reader (Netscape) has the columns mis-aligned. Can you suggest a fix, so that I can make sense of your data?

Sincerely, Jerry Forcier

Jerry Steiger wrote:

Reply to
Jerry Forcier

Sorry about the formatting. It wrapped the lines on Outlook Express as well. Here it is with a minimal number of spaces between characters so it isn't as likely to wrap. It may still have the columns aligned badly because of different fonts. (I'm not smart enough to figure out how to change fonts in express.)

File Original Default -Preview -Display -Parasolid Papa 387995 120163 120084 118523 3699 Mama 5915 2793 2730 2146 976 Baby 224 104 91 84 71

If you still can't make heads or tails of it, the important part (to me, at least) is that the Parasolid information that SW04 added increased the complex part file size by a factor of 32X, the medium size file by a factor or 2.2X, and the small file by a factor of 1.2X

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems "take the garbage out, dear"

Reply to
Jerry Steiger

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