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Heavy PDFs with Archicad hatches

ananas
Advocate

Hi!

 

I am struggling with PDFs exported from Archicad including hatches. They get super heavy and I don´t understand why because if I use the same hatches in software as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator I am able to compress the PDFs well by export. 

Should I set PDF export files differently or does anyone know how to deal with these heavy PDFs from Archicad?

 

Thank you!

 

6 REPLIES 6
4dProof
Advisor

this has been an issue for quite a while. I have just eliminated any overly complex fills from my templates to avoid bloated PDF's. And watch out for any team members creating custom fills with too many arcs/lines. Other than that, you can flatten or compress a pdf after publishing, but that can also create issues, depending on what it is being used for.

BIM solutions and trouble shooting (self proclaimed) expert. Using Archicad 26 5002 US on Mac OS 11.5.2
runxel
Legend

Sounds like you're using the vectorial fills.

Vectorial fills will stay as a fill in a DWG, but will be single lines and arcs in a PDF.

For symbol fills it is the opposite. They will be exploded into lines in a DWG, but stay as a fill in a PDF.

Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»

Hi!

 

Thank you for answering! I actually use low quality seamless jpg textures. I´ve actually always been struggling with PDFs including hatches from Archicad and I don´t understand why. A workaround I use is that I use the same hatches in photoshop and then combine PDF lines from Archicad with JPG textures from photoshop. As long as we don´t use any hatches from Archicad, there are no issues.

It would be great though if we could export everything directly from Archicad though, to avoid double work.

 

Image fills are notoriously bad with Archicad, sadly.

There is no silver bullet for you. We can only hope GS will improve its PDF export by a ton in the near future.

(One would have guessed so with the advent of the possibility of image fills in sections, but alas)

Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»

Understood, thank you for answering!

 

Hi! I am wondering if this texture hatch improves in newer versions of Archicad in 25 for example?

I would now export the textures as jpg and the lines as PDF and join them in InDesign later, but somehow exporting jpg from Archicad ends up in very low quality. Do you maybe know why and how to improve jpg export quality?