Significantly compress a DWG?

gdgt · 发表于 2022-7-7 16:49:03

Hello,

I'm a mechanical engineer with a lot of experience working with SolidWorks, but no experience with AutoCAD. My boss has asked me to take a 44MB .DWG and compress it to under 15MB so that it can be viewed on his iPad to show to clients (using the AutoCAD WS which is limited to opening files smaller than 15MB). I spent hours doing this several weeks ago and was just barely able to get it down to the required size. However, I was never able to repeat the process and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I did it. Now I have to do it again for a different file and am struggling to do so.

Since the file is just going to be quickly shown to clients it does not need to have all 400 layers or any other kind of accompanying details. Hell I could merge all the layers together if that would reduce the file size and I knew how to do that. I'm not at my work computer right now, but I think by clicking options under save and removing all proxy images (or something like that) I was able to reduce the file size to around17MB. I've purged the file as well but that only removed a few KB. Can anyone help me out with a suggestion on further compressing the file?

Thank you!

Dadgad · 发表于 2022-7-7 17:03:17

But, there is Design Review for iPad, might be better than AutoCAD WS in this case.

As for reducing drawing size, try selecting what is needed and using WBLOCK.

gdgt · 发表于 2022-7-7 17:17:55

Dadgad: I followed your instructions and reduced my file size by about 200KB which was not quite enough but still helpful.

f700es: Can PDF files be rotated like a 3D DWG in WS? All I'm getting is an image... Maybe I'm not publishing properly?

SLW210: WBLOCK seems to work pretty well if I leave out some parts, however I can't do this and need just about everything...

Is there anyway to compress everything down to a single layer? I feel like that would cut down the size considerably..

I also ran into another problem... The file I'm working with references another file which contains the "base" of the plant. When I use WBLOCK (and only export portions of the plant) I cannot export the "base".. The file opens fine using AutoCAD but when I upload it to my iPad the base isn't there. Is there a way to combine the main file and the referenced file into a single file?

Thank you!

MSasu · 发表于 2022-7-7 17:30:26

I agree with MSasu and SLW210. Publishing to DWF is probably your best bet. Just have your boss install the free Design Review software on his iPad and he will be able to open and view the dwf.

You can learn more about, and download, Design Review here: http://usa.autodesk.com/design-review/

f700es · 发表于 2022-7-7 17:39:05

Well I used BIND to combine the external reference with my drawing so thats solved.

I saved to a DWF and uploaded it to Autodesk Cloud and attempted to open it in Design Review, however, all I see is a refresh symbol where the preview should be and no option to open it.. Any ideas?

Thank you

Edit: Alright I got it.. Some how. I was playing around with WBLOCK and managed to export the entire DWG to a new block but 5MB smaller (12MB now). I haven't been able to recreate that though so I'm not entirely sure what I did, but it opens in AutoCAD WS. Anyone have any ideas on what I did? Just in case I have to do this again for another file in the future..

SLW210 · 发表于 2022-7-7 17:52:30

Hi gdgt,

I put together a post on optimizing AutoCAD DWG files that you might find useful. Here it is:
http://cadsetterout.com/autocad-tutorials/how-to-optimize-your-autocad-dwgs/

[综合讨论] Significantly compress a DWG?

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