with as complex as computers are along with software that runs on them, it just might be (you might think this is a cop out) something minor to your PC and maybe another alibre user would be able to open the files.
Back to SW again, there were times when one of us in our engineer cube farm could not open a specific file. The solution was to hang your head into the next guy's office and ask him to open it and resave it. Naturally he would open the file right up, save it out, spread some pixie dust around....wah lah! It would then work.
We tried to keep all our engineering systems as close as possible in specifications, roll up our service packs at the same time, etc. so I have no idea why this would happen but it did.
Sometimes on importing files would have the same issues. It was very strange.
So, you have to add "Act of God" to your list of possible causes.
Side note - the reason that the file would grow so large when you open it or import it (not just Alibre) is the model file is basically a database file. Open a database file, and the file size grows even if you do nothing to it. Work it a little bit and the file can grow quickly into a monster. It seems as though, years ago in the caves of pogrammers, a technique was used then and carried forward to today that makes DB files inefficient. It might be Windows, or the DB program used is making little temporary notes or search reference data points for speed, but the programs never seem to clean them up automatically when you are done with them. Why do you think Access had a user run tool to compact and clean up the database files.
SW has crap like that too. One thing that can work in SW was to do a 'save as'. This, for some reason, would cause the model database file to be flushed of garbage and the file would be smaller.
Also, when sending large models around, if there was a lot of geometry (faces, points, edges, or even features) what we would do is extrude a bounding box around all the model geometry as the very last feature and save the file out. That would make a HUGE difference as program would apparently flush out more of the DB file that was just there for displaying the model. Last trick that sometimes would work was to create a new configuration specifically for moving files over the internet, and suppress all the geometry within the model, save out, you now have a much small file (again I assume display data is not needing to be stored when the file is featureless in the current configuration).
Doesn't really help you here I don't think, but the problem is not Alibre, its more or less across the board with many types of files so at this point I assume it is the way that Microsoft expects or requires Windows Certified programs to do things. Open a Word file sometime, do nothing to it, save it back out and it will be larger.
mshideler
