Emailing large files

[Willallison]

Having created a zip file (that contains 2 AutoCAD, 2 Excel and 1 word file) which forms one of my lesson submissions I find that the file (at 9.37MB) is larger than my server will allow me to send via email.
Even with the files separate, one of the AutoCAD files is still to large to send.
I tried sending via a webmail account, but this too had an 8MB limit.
Short of burning the files on to a cd and posting them, does anyone have any suggestions? Surely people must send much bigger CAD files around than this all the time.....

[SailDesign]

Will, how often do you purge your ACAD files? They can get pretty slim.
Also, try making a DXF, and zipping that - the simpler format allows for a more aggressive "Squish", and they frequently finish up smaller than the original DWG zipped.

Steve "Good luck with that..."

[Danielsan]

If the above doesn't work
try this
If you only intend to show it to people, you might try to upload them on a personal website if you have one, (you mostly have one when having an email account.) Then put the hyperlinks in your post.
or this
If you realy want to send it to an email you could send different mails containing a spanned disk. Some kind of utility in winzip that makes it possible to assign sizes to the zip file. Winzip then makes the needed qtyty of disks or files.

greetz,

Daniel Peeters

[Jeff]

Steve's advice of purging the acad file is the first thing I'd do.

Second would be to zip the autocad file with winzip or powerarchiver, set to maximum compression. Some dwg files are compressible to half or even 1/4 of their original size.

(Also remember that when you email files, the emai protocol can inflate substantially the actual size of the attachment, so if you have an 8 MB limit, you might only be able to send a 5 MB file + email overhead)

Edit: oops... typing way too slow today. Sorry for repeating...

P.S. And if all else fails and you want me to create for you either a pop3 email account with no sending limit or an ftp account, just send me a PM.

[Morgig]

In regards to doing a purge, you should try the 'wblock' command, as this will cut and paste all the data you see on the screen to a new and normally much smaller file, leaving all the crap that a normal purge does not get.

[Willallison]

You guys are so bloody clever!! ...now if only I new what you were talking about
Lets start with the purge bit - what is it and how do I do it?
Sorry to be such a *****, but well...I'm a *****!

[Jeff]

OK get ready for some really technical advice : I just type purge which will bring up a dialog box with the "purge all" option in newer versions of acad. You select which unused blocks/unused items to clear or most often, I just clear all of them since I'm religious about keeping lots of incremental backups anyway. A long time ago I was told you want to do the 'purge all' right after opening for maximum effect, but I believe that may be historical trivia now.

With the wblock command you just type wblock and then select which objects to export to a new file.

--memories of floppy disks and DEC alpha's...

[Willallison]

hmm - reckon I might be able to manage that - thanks. What does it actually do though? I'm not going to accidentally delete a whole stack of stuff coz I don't know what I'm doing am I? And is it something I should do on a regular basis?

[Jeff]

It deletes any empty layers, unused styles, and importantly for file size, blocks embedded in the file that are not currently in use (but were at one time created/inserted into the drawing file.)

If ever in doubt, keep a copy of the file before performing any action in case you ever need to go back and retrive something. Or use wblock as Morgig says to create a clean file to zip and email, and view the resulting "clean" file to assure yourself that everything you intended to be exported is in fact in the new file ok.

[Willallison]

Thanks again Jeff - I'll give it a whirl tonight.

[Willallison]

For those interested, I finally succeeded in sending my file.
I purged the file (and was also on the brink of purging the computer I might add!) which reduced its size somewhat.
It was also suggested that I should remove any duplicate lines etc that may have been imported from my hull fairing program. I had already done this, so the file still seems inordinately large....
Anyway, success was finally had when Dave Gerr suggested that after purging and auditing, I could send the file in bits after splitting it with a program called Maxsplitter. http://www.acc.umu.se/~max/download.html
This I did. The file is sent. And all in the world is right again!

Once again - my thanks to you all

[botenoutlet]

please use www.gmail.com.
1 GB of space here!

[Jeff]

Originally Posted by botenoutlet

please use www.gmail.com.
1 GB of space here!

Gmail is a neat system for webmail, but from their FAQ the max individual message size via. gmail is 10 MB, so it wouldn't have provided the solution to this particular problem.

What's the maximum attachment size?
Answer return to Help Center


That depends on the attachment. With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 10 megabytes (MB) in size.

When you add an attachment, the size of a file may increase because transport encodings (the information that allows your message to be safely sent and read) are automatically added.

This means that in some cases, attachments that are 6 to 10MB in size may push the total message size above 10MB. When this happens, Gmail displays a warning that your message exceeds the 10MB limit.