VI size larger than expected

[steve.mate]

I am working with some legacy code, written in LabVIEW 2010, x86. Several VIs in the project seem to be massively oversized when compared to their block diagrams. Instead of being ~100K in size, they are sitting between 8Mb and 12Mb. I've checked for result arrays being saved and such, and cannot find anything. According to the VI Properties window, the total RAM use for one of the oversized Vis is 223K, while the size on disk is 10886.5K

Does anyone know how to track down where the bloat is? 

[crossrulz]

Is there a picture on the block diagram or the pront panel?  I've also seen pictures set as the front panel background that were huge in size.

Large array constants or default values would be the first place I would check (which it sounds like you already did).

[altenbach]

Also look for graphs and charts that contain default data.

Clear all arrays, graphs, and charts on the front panel, then make current values the default before saving.

[altenbach]

The size on disk shoiuld always be smaller than the size in memory, because there is compression.

Do you have a lot of express VIs and such?

Maybe there is some corruption. Try to copy the code to a new VI, hook up all connectors, save it with a new name, and see if the size gets more reasonable.

[steve.mate · Accepted solution]

After a bit more troubleshooting, I was able to narrow down the problem to the typedefs included in the VIs. Still more work discovered that the numerical indicators used in the typedefs each added >100KB to the file size, each time it was included. After replacing the existing indicators with the generic labview indicators, the filesize dropped down to tens of KB. Adding the back the orginal style indicator with no data in it brought the filesize back up, so I believe it was the indicator itself, and not any data accidently saved as default.

The faulty indicator was from the UI Control Suite: Metalic Theme 

https://www.ni.com/en/support/downloads/tools-network/download.metallic-theme-ui-controls-toolkit.ht...