How To Shrink The File Size Of A Configured Part in SOLIDWORKS

Adding Configurations causes the file size to grow 

When working with configured parts inside of SOLIDWORKS, adding more configurations to the original part will make your file size grow too. This can be frustrating because the larger the file size is, the more time it takes to open, save, and rebuild a part. Good news, though. There is a way to bring a file size back down to almost the original file size before any configurations were created. 

My sample part for this exercise is a Grill assembly model that I will be creating 50 individual configurations from. 

Before I start adding configurations to this model the file size is around 15MB. As I create more configurations the file size starts to grow. 

After creating all 50 configurations of my part the file grew from 15MB to over 600MB! This is because as you create more configurations and click on each of these configurations the configuration data for each of these configurations keep getting added to the original part file. The 600MB+ file has each of these different configurations added to the original part file size.

Shrinking the file size back down after creating all of the configurations

Now that we have created all of the configurations, cycled through them to make sure there are no errors and everything looks correct in each of the configurations, we can now shrink the file size back down. 

The trick to shrinking the file size is that when you first open your configured part, only the configuration that the part was saved in is currently loaded. 

As soon as you make changes or click on a different configuration your file size will start to grow. So what we want to do is right when the part first opens, we will want to do a save as of this part and rename the part file to a new name. When we save the part to the new part file name the size of the part will now drop back down to almost the original part file size.

Once we have done the save as and renamed the part file, you can then close the renamed part and reopen that same renamed part so that it only has the one configuration loaded. 

We can then do a save as of the renamed part and save over the original part file name. 

Now your original part file with the original name is back down to a similar part file size after creating all your configurations. The renamed part could now be deleted, so there is no confusion about part file names. 

Remember, the main trick here is when you first open your configured part, it will only have the current configuration loaded; so before you make any changes or load any other configurations, do a save as and rename the part. 

If you try and save over the same part file name, this will not shrink the part file size. Only after you rename the part will the file size shrink, and then you can reopen the renamed configuration and save over your original part. 

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