Reducing Revit File Size

Here are some tips on how to reduce your Revit file size

      Warnings - These get ignored and pile up and some of these are more offensive than others. Room, space and area errors caused by boundary issues or redundancy is wasting your cpu's time. Any warning is a waste of "space" and "resources" to some degree.

      View Detail - Do you have a lot of views that are using fine or medium detail level but have scales like 1/16", 1/8"=1'-0" (1:200, 1:100, 1:50)? These views won't really show this level of detail for all elements effectively and you are asking the computer to show it anyway.

      Unused Content - Families that are not going to be used at all can contributed to some bloat. Especially if they are complex families that are quite large to begin with. Purge out any unused families, if you’re not sure export the families into a container file before purging the project file.

      Compact Central - An oversimplification, it is akin to the operating system performing defragmentation of your computer's hard drive. Think of it as asking Revit to clean up after a busy day, it allows Revit to reduce file size.

      Create New Central File - Open the Central file with the “detach from Central” box checked, and then save as a new Central file with a different file name, or to a different location on their server. What this does is it rewrites the database associated with the file and can dramatically reduce the file size.

      Audit your Families – You can check the file size of your families simply by “export family types” then going through the family list to check the file size. You’ll easily be able to spot large family files at a glance.

      Limit custom crop regions – Custom crop regions are “resource intense”, you computer has to think every time you go to that view, reducing the amount of custom crop regions will help reduce the file size.

      Limit 3D views – Keep the number of 3D views in your project to a minimum where possible. Similar to custom crop regions, 3D views are “resource intense”.

      Limit imported images – Images can easily inflate your file size, if you have any background images for rendering or images in your title block that you need to keep, look at reducing the image file size by as much as possible without compromising the quality of the image.

      Export Renderings and walk-thru’s – Any renderings or walkthroughs created in Revit increase your file size, by exporting these you can dramatically reduce the file size.

      Limit the use of Groups and Array’s – Large numbers of groups and array’s in a project can bloat the model. Purge unused groups from the model regularly and turn off the “Group and Associate” option when using the Array tool.