Overview

Compressing a file using File > Compress Design or the related key-in commands (either by manual key-in or via batch process) makes these actions available:

Connect Edition:

File > Tools > Compress Options:

V8i: File > Compress > Compress Options

Note that these actions are ignored by the 'Compress File on Exit' user preference, for details see: Compress File on Exit

Tick 'Include References' to initiate a batch process that will compress all attached references.

Note: this tick box has no effect in PowerDraft as the batch process features are not present.

File compress can be initiated manually via the dialog or by key-in.

Relevant key-ins include:

• COMPRESS DESIGN
• COMPRESS DESIGN INCLUDEREFS
• DELETE UNUSED
• COMPRESS OPTIONS (see How to turn ON/OFF Compress options via Key-in for more on this command, very useful when batch processing.)

Search MicroStation Help for details of these key-ins.

The File compress process will first apply any selected compress actions then will compact the file's structured storage removing any elements marked for deletion.

The results of the Compress operation are displayed in the Message Center, along with the commands used (which is a handy way to quickly find those key-ins if you need them, for instance when working with DGNLIBs, where you need to use the key-ins to clean out unwanted content as compress does not operate on DGNLIBs):

Configuration

These actions can be pre-set in the site configuration using the MS_COMPRESS_OPTIONS configuration variable. Adding the following:

MS_COMPRESS_OPTIONS   =  +ALL

would apply all available actions, the Compress Options dialog would appear as above.

Important: If using this variable with OpenBuildings Designer see:

Compress Options in OpenBuildings Designer - Behaviour and Configuration

Individual actions can be selected, as described by Ask Inga: Configure your compress options

The order of the statement is significant, +ALL ticks all the boxes (generally want all of them ticked), adding further entries prefixed by '-' can omit the stated compress actions where appropriate.

Reference

A list of all the configurable actions to copy and paste from if specifying individual settings for MS_COMPRESS_OPTIONS: