This figure is a plot of file size in bytes vs the number of points per zone for the following six CGNS version and data format combinations.
For the four largest grids the file size is essentially linear with the number of points. For CGNS 3.0 and 2.5 with both the ADF and HDF5 data formats, the size varies from about 5 megabytes (0.005 gigabytes) with 10000 points per zone to about 5 gigabytes with 107 points per zone. Over the same range the file size for the two XML data format cases is slightly larger, varying from about 6 megabytes to 6 gigabytes.
The data format has more effect on the file size for the two smaller grids. For both CGNS 3.0 and 2.5 with the HDF5 data format, the file size varies from about 0.6 megabyte with 100 points per zone, to about 1.0 megabyte with 1000 points per zone. Over the same range the file size for both CGNS 3.0 and 2.5 with the ADF data format varies from about 0.2 megabyte to 0.6 megabyte, and the size for both XML data formats varies from 0.08 megabyte to 0.6 megabyte.