I read the most recent posts concerning having huge file sizes and stored all the solutions that help a bit as well as the solution that helps drastically ("Remove all display states") in my memory. This way whenever we have parts that start to get out of hand, file size wise, we quickly can reduce them down to decent sizes.
However, to make clear that there's something fundamentally wrong with how the file sizes grow and that it doesn't depend solely on display states I can present the following.
To test something out I made a part which consists out of a fully defined sketch with +5 circles. All of these circles are in construction line. In short, the part has no features but only 1 sketch.
I then created a design table which contains a whole deal of information with the idea to be able to have a table in a drawing that gives the information without making the ASM model where I would add this part to would become graphically more intense. This design table governs many configs ; >800 which in all actuality are just variations of a basic 23 configs. To make things manageable I used config publisher on the part.
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So although the sketch itself only has 23 distinct versions, each of those versions has over 30 possibilities as to what kind of data it would display in a table on a DRW.
If I save the design table as an Excel file the resulting file is 240 KB. Never the less, the part itself becomes >5.6MB.
Now 5.6MB is not a huge file, not in solidworks terms but when you consider that there isn't even 1 single body involved then I do think that it's huge. Besides, it makes any ASM where one would use that part in rather slow to manipulate.
I then simplified the sketch so that it only consists of 1 circle. The only measurement left that was defined in the design table was the Ø of the circle. All other information in the design table was there solely to be able to put the right information on a table in a DRW. Resaved it and got as result that the part became 6.3MB. In other words by removing all but one drawing entity the size of the file went up by 0.5MB. Further proof that any file which gets resaved gets bigger.
I even contacted my VAR about it because it defies all logic. The best they could advise was using the 'rebuild/save mark' trick as well as the save under a new name. This did help a bit, the file size did get smaller then the original 5.6MB. If then I also remove the config publisher PropertyManager item the file size drops by a more then 1MB !
Proof that the config publisher also adds a significant amount of data to the part, depending on how many of configs are present in the design table.
If I delete the design table but not remove any of the configurations it has created then the file size drops by another 1MB.
In the end the only "solution" my VAR could give me to make the part file size really considerable smaller was by having less configs in the design table.
If you there for end up with something that is no longer comfortable to use because it just gets to big file size wise and even the usually solutions don't help keep in mind that removing the config publisher as well as the design table could help.
(By the way, if I bring the part down to having only 1 configuration it's still 149KB. I know I'm old fashioned but nevertheless I find it laughable that a part with one sketch that contains one circle which only has 1 measurement using a 80KB template file (defining the document properties and such) needs to have an additional 69.000 bytes so as to be definable in a program. For comparison: the original Donkey Kong game was less then 40KB. Programming has truly become a lost art.)