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About Archicad's documenting tools, views, model filtering, layouts, publishing, etc.

Adding jpg balloons pdf file size

Rick Thompson
Expert
I have to just assume this is the way it is (but should not) be, but does anyone know of another option here? I send out plan files most days, and if they are too large I have to break them into different emails. Not desirable. A typical pdf size with out an added jpeg rendering on the cover is under 2mb. If I add a 724KB image the pdf explodes to 9MB. If I add a 122KB jpeg it still balloons to 3.6. How can this be?

thanks
Rick Thompson
Mac Sonoma AC 26
http://www.thompsonplans.com
Mac M2 studio w/ display
14 REPLIES 14
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Rick wrote:
I just uploaded the files. I do drag jpegs to the layout, and then it will open the figure tool if I click it, not the drawing tool, so maybe I am not following you here?

Thanks for your help and attention...

Activate the drawing tool and just click in an Archicad 2D view or layout.
It will then prompt you what to do.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
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Minh Nguyen
Graphisoft Alumni
Graphisoft Alumni
Rick wrote:
I just uploaded the files. I do drag jpegs to the layout, and then it will open the figure tool if I click it, not the drawing tool, so maybe I am not following you here?

Thanks for your help and attention...
Hi Rick,

Thank you very much for the files!

Unfortunately, I was unable to find the publisher set you used for exporting the 10 layouts to PDF. Furthermore, when I created a new one, the PDF result was surprisingly small, about half of your smallest PDF size.

I'm wondering how did you create the PDF? If you use the Publisher set, could you recreate this set and reupload the PLA to the given link?

Thank you very much!

Best regards,
Minh

Minh Nguyen
Technical Support Engineer
GRAPHISOFT

Rick Thompson
Expert
Yes, sorry, that might not have been clear in my first post. I printed to PDF via MacOS. That evidently makes a big difference! I once used Publisher, but it was simply easier and faster to use the print dialogue. I work with 300~400 pln's I send out, and have a few layers I will turn on and off (like my seal, depending on the state I send to) etc. It's so simple to select the sheets I want to send out (it varies) and printing to PDF is very fast. Setting up that many Publisher sets is not inspiring to do:)

Thanks for helping, at least now I get the issue.
Rick Thompson
Mac Sonoma AC 26
http://www.thompsonplans.com
Mac M2 studio w/ display
Minh Nguyen
Graphisoft Alumni
Graphisoft Alumni
Hi Rick,

Thank you for the information! That would explain why the file size is so much different!
There is a difference between printing and publishing: they use different PDF "printer" to create the PDF. The printing method will use the system PDF printer on macOS, whereas publishing will use Archicad's own PDF printer.

Unfortunately, I do not know how the macOS PDF printer functions, so I cannot offer any info about this issue. Nevertheless, thank you very much for sharing this! I guess in some cases, our PDF printer was able to generate better PDF size then

Best regards,
Minh

Minh Nguyen
Technical Support Engineer
GRAPHISOFT

Rick Thompson
Expert
Thank you very much for your help... at least now I understand!
Rick Thompson
Mac Sonoma AC 26
http://www.thompsonplans.com
Mac M2 studio w/ display