Making assembly configurations with design tables, file sizes

I have started at a new company where the PDM package doesnot fall over if configurations are used.

Therefore, I started to make assembly configurations that aresimilar but with different lengths of one part different bolts andother parts attached, so suppressed or resolved per assembly, thengenerating drawings using model items (dimension marked fordrawings) to generate drawings with the same dimensions for eachdrawing. The issue has now arrisen after making 5 configurations onthe one assembly, the assembly file size is getting alittle too bigto handle and subsequently the drawings of the configuration isalso increasing in size.

Does anyone know of a solution for driving assembly configurationsbut keeping the file size low.

If not it looks like I'll be splitting the configurations but aquestion on this is do the drawings then need to be updated to findthe links to the new parts?SolidworksAssemblies