Hi everyone! I have posted the same question on the RhinoCAM forum as well, but: lately I’ve noticed my Rhino file sizes getting extremely large and am stumped as to why. I’m running Rhino6 and RhinoCAM 2020 on a PC with Windows 10. I’ve tried the Purge command, saving small, deleting layers and CAM operations, but nothing seems to have an effect on the file size. When I run the Audit3dmfile command, it appears that RhinoCAM is taking up the vast majority of the space in the file, even in situations where I’ve deleted the CAM operations prior to saving. I’m also not working with super complex textures or meshes. One absurd example from this morning: after doing a Save As operation on a file without having changed anything about it, it went from an original file size of 635MB (already very large given what’s in it) to 1778MB! So, yea, I’m confused.
I’m still learning Rhino and RhinoCAM and perhaps there’s some obvious reason for this, but I’d very much appreciate any ideas or things to try. If there’s more information I can provide, I’m happy to do so, although uploading the culprit files is probably not feasible since they’ve gotten so massive. Thanks in advance!!
Hi John – yep, did that. The file has no embedded images, and the entire objects table amounts to less than 1 MB. None of the other tables amount to much. Then you get to the Model User Data Table – the RhinoCAM plugin shows it taking up 1862 MB, even though the file size is reading as 1777 MB at the moment. This is with 11 separate CAM operations, but again, even if I remove those and resave the file, it does not get any smaller. If it would be useful I can copy and paste the Audit3dmFile report. If I get any replies on the RhinoCAM forum I’ll follow up here in case anyone else is running in to this problem.
what happens if you use _SaveSmall Command? Will it return to be 635mb? If so it is likely your model is producing a huge render mesh that is inflating your file.
ISTR long in the past that the RC data was not necessarily purged right away even if the Mop was deleted - for reasons I don’t recall anymore. Maybe that’s old info though, best is to contact Mecsoft directly and send them the file for analysis.
Had tried that previously on a different file and it didn’t appear to do anything, but I just tried it again on my current file, and lo and behold, it’s down to a much more reasonable 774 KB! When I audit the file the RhinoCAM plugin is now occupying only 22KB. I have no idea why this wasn’t having an effect before. My understanding is that the SaveSmall command eliminates the render meshes when saving the file but won’t affect anything else about it, like the geometry or CAM settings, which still seem to be intact. I’m definitely still finding my way with the software, but I’ve been working exclusively with polysurfaces and lines I’ve used to generate files for my CNC. If there are huge meshes somewhere, they’re not obvious to me (which of course doesn’t mean they aren’t right in front of my face.) Thanks for the suggestion Tay!
Well, I spoke too soon. Using “SaveSmall” seems to work inconsistently – this morning, working with the same file as in my earlier posts, I was able to add several CAM operations in RhinoCAM, using SaveSmall after each, and the file size stayed to around 520K. Then I used the Set World CS command to align everything, and SaveSmall resulted in the file size jumping to 653MB. The sizes are oddly consistent – in this and other files the size has increased to around 655MB, and subsequently to around 1770MB, regardless of the starting size.
I have not received any replies to my post on the MecSoft forum about this, but have submitted a support request to MecSoft. I will share any details/solutions I learn from them here in case anyone else runs in to this issue.
Sharing a File can help us getting to the bottom of the problem, I don’t have RhinoCAM, but at least I can troubleshoot the file and get a reasonable understanding of the problem.
Thank you, Tay. After getting in touch with MecSoft tech support, I was given two suggestions: first, reinstall the plugin; second, buy an upgrade to the latest version of the plugin. After reinstalling the plugin, it’s now back to behaving normally, with file sizes staying in a reasonable place upon a regular Save rather than SaveSmall. Evidently something had become corrupted in the plugin software that was resolved by reinstalling it, but the details about why are still a mystery. At least I’m able to perform backups – I’m hanging on to the installer EXE file in case this happens again. Thanks again for the help!
