Datasmith and cleaning the project from unnecessary Mesh

[Swolf74]

I am currently working with a large complex and have encountered this problem.
I have imported Revit->3dsMax(datasmith)->UE5. A lot of unique meshes have been loaded. For example, StaticMesh1, StaticMesh2 and StaticMesh3 are identical models and StaticMeshActor1, StaticMeshActor2 and StaticMeshActor3 have been created respectively. I have replaced the Static Mesh with a new one, but when I try to delete StaticMesh1 from the project, I am warned that this Mesh is used in the project. I really want to clean the project. Project Cleaner and Migrate do not help. The number of Meshes to delete from the project is more than 10,000. This cannot be done manually
Have you encountered this problem? How can this be solved?

[BRGEzeHulton]

Hello Swolf74. Yeah, this is a really common (and frustrating) issue when importing large scenes via Revit → 3ds Max → Datasmith. It creates tons of unique static meshes even if they’re visually identical.

Unfortunately, Unreal sees them as completely separate assets, so deleting or replacing them globally becomes tricky.

Here are some things that might help — though I admit, it’s still a lot of work:

Try to identify duplicated geometry and replace them in the level manually or via Blueprint tools (like using Get All Actors of Class to swap them with a single master mesh).
You can mark identical meshes and try using “Replace References” in the Content Browser — but with 10k+ meshes, this won’t scale easily.
Some users export a cleaned-up version from 3ds Max (merging identical meshes beforehand), then reimport over the same Datasmith file — but I know that’s a big step if your level is already populated.

Even tools like Project Cleaner won’t help until all references are removed manually or with scripts.

So yeah… it’s not a one-click fix (yet), but small automation steps + good asset naming/tagging can go a long way.

I found something in the forum that can help you.

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Is there any way to find assets not linked to a scene actor, in order to delete them from the library? After updating a source file, and re-importing through Datasmith, assets with updated meshes — possibly split into parts, or re-created, still retain the original mesh item in the library. On large imports this leads to large amounts of duplicate and unnecessary geometry residing in the library folder.

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I have a datasmith file in my project that I need removed. My process has been to select the actors in the scene and delete them, then delete the folder in the Content Browser. This is currently taking over an hour during which UE4 locks up completely as it goes through the various steps. Is this just part of working with Unreal, or is there a better way I’m not aware of? For reference, this is a 3 story building created in Revit. And oddly enough, only takes about 12 minutes to light bake …