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

PDF printing file sizes

rjwilden
Booster
Why are the PDf files in V11 so big.
A 15 page A1 project will publish out at 25MB
The same job if I print out single sheets using the Amyuni Printer 12MB
Looking back at old files most jobs came in at 8-10 MB
The PDF printing was supposed to be improved. Looks like were going backwards.
There is no way I can email a 25Mb file. Which is a big reason I have used this in the past,

Richard.
Richard Wilden Design. Ltd
Dunedin, New Zealand.
Imac 27" i9 3.6GHz; 32GB Ram Mac OS 11.3
Archicad V23:V24
8 REPLIES 8
Andy Thomson
Advisor
11 is a step backwards, I would concur, in this regard. Bloated PDFs have caused me no end of grief with remote print houses, that now demand sheet-by-sheet files from us, or reduced/optimized (in Acrobat pro/preview) work.

We isolated some culprit fills - like the hexagonal insulation hatch, and some others that were making pageloads painfully slow.

There needs to be better resolution options on OS X, flattenning, and built-in filesize optimization. Just compare a set of DWF's - amazing at 1/4 to 1/10th the size, same information.
Andy Thomson, M.Arch, OAA, MRAIC
Director
Thomson Architecture, Inc.
Instructor/Lecturer, Toronto Metropolitan University Faculty of Engineering & Architectural Science
AC26/iMacPro/MPB Silicon M2Pro
Djordje
Ace
rjwilden wrote:
There is no way I can email a 25Mb file.
There in fact is, kinda ...

http://www.sendthisfile.com/

Until the PDF bloating is fixed. I usually run them through Acrobat's Reduce the file size function, and often end up with 10% of the original. Scary.
Djordje



ArchiCAD since 4.55 ... 1995
HP Omen
Andy Thomson
Advisor
Djordje wrote:
...and often end up with 10% of the original. Scary.
Something so 'easy' should be internal to AC's PDF generation. Maybe they can give someone at Adobe a phone call?
Andy Thomson, M.Arch, OAA, MRAIC
Director
Thomson Architecture, Inc.
Instructor/Lecturer, Toronto Metropolitan University Faculty of Engineering & Architectural Science
AC26/iMacPro/MPB Silicon M2Pro
Thomas Holm
Booster
I don't get this PDF bloating problem. Is it platform depandant? I mean I thought AC11 still uses MacOSX's system PDF creating, but I don't know what's going on on the PC side since Aymuni was fired?
AC4.1-AC26SWE; MacOS13.5.1; MP5,1+MBP16,1
Andy Thomson
Advisor
We have single sheets averaging 600KB to 2MB - making sets enormous. This is both with 'print/save as PDF' under OS X and Publish workflows.

PC's still give more resolution options. OS X only gives Arc resolution.
I have heard complaints from at least 16 firms in the UK and Canada.
Andy Thomson, M.Arch, OAA, MRAIC
Director
Thomson Architecture, Inc.
Instructor/Lecturer, Toronto Metropolitan University Faculty of Engineering & Architectural Science
AC26/iMacPro/MPB Silicon M2Pro
Djordje
Ace
It heavily, and I mean HEAVILY depends on the fills used. Percentage fills are next to the symbol fills. I had cases when I could not print, as I really went overboard with fills ...

Looked good, though ... sigh!
Djordje



ArchiCAD since 4.55 ... 1995
HP Omen
Anonymous
Not applicable
There seems to be no solution to this BIG problem.
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
I don't know if this helps, and someone else probably said this already... but I noticed recently on Windows, that SAVEing as PDF vs printing to either Acrobat or Amyuni resulted in much faster PDF generation and smaller files.

Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
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