Does blender have a feature that allows for the analysis of the data stored in a .blend file? If not, is there some add-on or separate program that exists for such a purpose? My .blend files can get quite large and I’d love to have the ability to spot the cause of that, in each case, so I can decide if I’d like to delete certain things from a file or not.
Have u tried that one?
No, I have not tried any; I had difficulty finding anything relevant when searching the web; I only found some others asking similar questions with no solution. I’ll have a look, hopefully sometime today. A quick look at the website shows that it might be 2.8x only, and I’m on 3.5, although maybe I can use it to see the size of different elements via 2.8 and then remove them in 3.5
Thanks for the suggestion, Sergey 
I will try it with 3.5 and see how it goes.
I had seen that, yes. I assumed the solution at the first link was related to data size in working memory, data stored in RAM, which can be quite different than what is stored on disk, when accounting for modifiers.
The second link does provide information that is useful, and I did try to utilize it, however, and correct me if this is wrong, it requires manually analyzing all the datablocks: delete, save, then look at file size. I was ideally hoping for something like an extra column in the outliner that displays the size on disk and size in RAM, beside each datablock.
Again, thank you for the help so far. I do appreciate the effort
You’re absolutely right, this suggests you to browse all of your files (assets) manually.
No problem, I’m always glad to help 
The atomic data manager appears to function in Blender 3.5. Admittedly, I’m not certain that it did not cause any errors; I’m going by a purely surface level inspection: smart select, clean, save, then load, and the cleaned file works. However, it doesn’t really offer the functionality I’m after.
Seems the best option available is to
- manually look through the ‘Data API’ and ‘Scene’/‘View Layer’ views in the outliner, checking the stats of the various elements in the file, and making an educated guess as to affect any given element has on the file size
- use atomic data manager and/or the ‘Clean Up’ option in the file menu to clean things up
The mesh complexity of an object can be viewed via the ‘Data API’ outliner view, like so:
The object’s modifiers can also be checked here. So if an object has a multires with a high subdivision level, that could also be the cause of a large size.
Hi,
Gotcha. Hope it helped you anyway. I can suppose maybe there’s another add-on that has the exact functionality that you’re after for, but at the end of the day that’s all what I have found 
So have you looked at from the ‘Blender standard’ method ?
Create your objects as individual files and link them from a working file.
Which means you can work with low poly versions of most / all things while creating and animating. Then at render time use the hi quality versions of everything.
Admittedly this concept has changed recently so I am still not 100% on how its working now because I have not used it yet. Got lost about 3 weeks ago having a quick look at it.
But anyhow - the working file stays small, because its mostly linked files. So the whole bloated file issue never happens. And you can see the size of the individual files.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.5/files/linked_libraries/index.html
Sergey, we are now brothers in misery, to be sure 
Having only done light coding, and not considering myself a programmer, I don’t know how easy such a thing would be to make.
Admittedly, my initial post could have been clearer as to what I was looking for. Sorry, about that. Given the criteria I provided, I think the add-on you found does fit, but its functionality is quite limited.
No, I haven’t. That method would be important to utilize when creating a bigger project, however my use case for blender is usually limited to one-off scenes, or the creation of individual assets.
I’m a bit of a blend file hoarder, so if I’m experimenting with methods or making a large change to my asset or scene, I like to save it as a new blend file. When I do that, I don’t usually clean up the mess I’ve made with blockout elements, object duplicates, and other results of experimenting while making. Some of these things I’d like to keep, but not in every subsequent blend file. Having the ability to see the size of elements in a blend file would make it easier to decide what should stay and what should go.
I do realize one solution may be to think ahead, go slower, and be more organized, but that is not how I work when making arty type things.
Hah, for sure!
No need to sorry, David. The thing is, your question is quite specific and unique at the same time. I haven’t seen anything like that or even closer to this before. Therefore I can assume that it wouldn’t be that easy to find an answer on that, though I don’t rule out that maybe the potential solution is already exist and all you need to do is just find it.