Reducing filesize for submissions in infoBase

Rhino files (3DM)

• Remove any geometry that is not essential. You may have some copies of surfaces in layers that are turned off.
• Remove (layers with) unused curves or curves that are not essential
• If you have many copies of the same object, consider using blocks instead of copies.

Maya projects (compressed)

When handing in a Maya project (compressed into a zip, rar or other archive format, see: Using 7zip with file archives), it's recommended to clean the project of all unnecessary files to keep the archive file as small as possible.

• First make a copy of your project, so you don't accidentally delete something you may want to keep for you own reference.
• In your scenes folder of your project, delete the following
  • all old versions of scenes, or scenes that are no longer relevant (deprecated)
  • incrementalSave folder
  • .mayaSwatches folder
• Delete all files in your project's images folder (provided you didn't use that location for textures, for which the sourceimages folder should be used)
• Delete any unused or 'working originals' in your sourceimages folder, such as PSD files you used to create textures.
• Delete the renderData folder of your project. Sometimes it gets filled with huge files.

If your project is still too big to be handed in, this is probably because there are lots of textures in your project (which don't compress too well). You may consider lowering the resolution of the biggest images, as this will yield considerable reduction of their file size.

Maya Scenes (MB)

• Remove (layers with) imported AutoCAD curves
• If you have many copies of the same object, consider using Instances instead of copies.
• If you have structures that consist of a very large number (>1000) of fairly simple polygon objects, you may consider combining them into a single object. Never use this for assignments in which polygon modeling is assessed.

PDF

Refer to Exporting PDF files from Illustrator for tips on how to reduce the file size of PDFs.

You may also Combine multiple files into one single PDF file, whether they are PDF's, images or the like.

AutoCAD DWG

• Remove unnecessary objects and layers
• Remove embedded rasterimages or reduce their size
• Don't explode hatches
• Consider compressing the DWG file using a ZIP or RAR compression. In most cases, you can also upload .zip or .rar files.

JPG Images

The jpeg file format is optimized for small file sizes. If you have a high resolution image, files may still be big. You can save them in a lower quality (higher compression) or reduce their resolution. The latter is recommended for images over 3000 pixels wide or tall. 'Screen sized' images (up to 2000 pixels) should never be too big to be handed in.

STL Files

STL files can be very big if they are saved with low tolerance settings. Using low tolerance values can result in polygon meshes with a huge number of polygons.

Try exporting your model with a higher tolerance setting:

very small objects (objects smaller than 10cm)

0.01mm

small objects (building details)

0.1-1mm

large objects (buildings)

1-10mm or 0.001-0.01m

very large objects (landscapes or urban plans)

10-100mm or 0.01-0.1m