What affects eDrawing size?
There are several factors including display options, file type, and model complexity. An eDrawing is a special format developed by SolidWorks to compress and view a drawing file with additional 2D/3D hybrid viewing and animation. The format has been optimized for small file size to ease distribution of model data via the internet or portable disk. There are a few choices you can make to make these compact files even smaller.
First, there are a few different file types to save eDrawings as. You can save just the eDrawing itself (*.EDRW), or you can save a self-extracting, self-viewing type (*.EXE), or you can Zip up the EXE file to help it through firewalls (*.ZIP), or you can send an HTML version of the eDrawing (*.HTM).
If the recipient has the eDrawings Viewer installed (available free from www.edrawingsviewer.com), then you only need to send the EDRW file. Otherwise, any person running Windows can run the EXE to open and manipulate the eDrawing. The EXE has a viewer embedded in the file, along with the CAD data, which adds about 2 MB to the file size. The ZIP file is generally the same size as the EXE file would be. The HTM file is only a couple KB larger than the EDRW file and will open in Internet Explorer, thus helping the recipient to download the required eDrawings Viewer if he or she does not have it installed.
Another factor that can affect eDrawing size is the image quality of the 3D model. As described in another tech tip, the setting for Tools - Options - Document Properties - Image Quality - Shaded resolution affects SolidWorks part and assembly file size (if saved in shaded mode), due to the number of graphical facets. This is also true of eDrawings. When an eDrawing is published, the settings of the SolidWorks models are used to determine the quality of the 3D image. Higher shaded image quality leads to larger files. For example, a test run publishing an eDrawing of a 1" diameter sphere generated a 3 KB eDrawing file at the lowest shaded quality setting, and a 53 KB file at the highest setting. The same test run for a 1" cube showed no difference in file size (1 KB), since the number of display facets only increases for curved surfaces.
The number of views in the drawing can affect the eDrawing size, but not drastically. Only one 3D representation of the model is saved, regardless of how many drawing views there are. Less views require less line/arc/spline data to be stored, but this data is very compact compared to the 3D image.
With eDrawings Professional, you can choose to include multiple configurations or drawing sheets in the eDrawings you publish. This increases file size but is more efficient than creating multiple eDrawing files for each configuration or drawing sheet.
The option to allow STL creation from an eDrawing file does not appear to increase file size in our experience.
