Reduce file size after deleting elements

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to reduce the file size of a DGN file that contains the city of Toronto. I need to create smaller separate files in order to import them in another software. I was able to delete elements and keep only a small fraction of the model but the filesize stills the same...

Could you help me?

Thank you!

  • have you tried compressing the file ? From the file pulldown FILE>COMPRESS>OPTIONS take a look at the options available and select what you feel is needed. There may be options you do not want to use (IE: Delete unused levels)

    Timothy Hickman

    CADD Manager | CADD Department

    timothy.hickman@colliersengineering.com

    Main: 877 627 3772| 

    1000 Waterview Drive Suite 201 | Hamilton, New Jersey 08691

  • Another method to create a file from only a portion of a larger file is to place a fence around it and then use "Copy fence contents to file" - in the Toolsettings you are able to define a new filename. And this file will be sleek and slim. Deleting a large portion of elements on a copy - though it is the first thing that comes into play - is not so effective and results in all kinds of undesired leftovers if you do not compress carefully.

  • PMFJI, and not meaning to belabor any particular point, but deleted elements are not written back to the file as "marked for delete". When you delete an element and exit a design session (and are not using Design History), that element will no longer exist in the file. As Tim and Gerd infer, there are other things in the file that can be purged when doing a compress (with the appropriate options set for compress), but there will not be any deleted elements purged because they do not exist in the file.

      

  • The common way of "creating" new files by copying existing files and deleting the not required content (opposite to creating new files from "clean" templates/seeds) causes - also probably with the most software packages - in a lot of burden regarding filesize, bandwidth and ultimately time wasted. On the positive ;) side it is probably one of the huge perpetual sources of income for the digital storage hardware industry...
  • but it has gotten cheaper and  cheaper..

    My flash or thumb drive 16Gb cost me $15 ( 2014)  my first  hard drive ( amiga Scusi late 1980's)  300Mb cost me  $300  we used to get  $15 /hr pay in late 1980's

    Today internal 3 Tb hdrive  cost <$150  yes servers space is a little more but per Mb its tiny ( 0.005cents /Mb= 15000c/3000x1000 Mb)

    just using the thumb drive  16gb is approx 1/2 hour pay  so 16000Mb  for 1/2  ( or 32,000 Mb /1 hours pay, )  old drive  300Mb for 20 hours pay = 15Mb for 1 hr pay

    so 32000/15 = 2133 times cheaper  mb for mb today  or another way  if you could buy todays 16Gb drive back in the 80s with 80's 'money  
    $1/Mb would have been $16000  ( but in todays money  would still be $4000... yet today  it costs only $15 or  9 cents / Mb in todays money for thumb drive)

    or if 3 Tb intern HD equivalent was  in 1980s  tech and money even then at $1/Mb  would be  $3 million  or  $12 million in todays money not $150 (0.005cents/Mb) which also shows thumb drives are very expensive per mb compared with HDs

    so today storage space is so cheap today who cares about space...  so much that a lot of my  friends now have refurbished  their old slow laptops instead of getting new faster ones have opted to put small solid state hds for windows and programs to load on and get  very big improved performance... I'm thinking of doing the same on my desktop...

    Lorys

    Started msnt work 1990 - Retired  Nov 2022 ( oh boy am I old )

    But was long time user V8iss10 (8.11.09.919) dabbler CE  update 16 (10.16.00.80) 

    MicroStation user since 1990 Melbourne Australia.
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