Does anyone have a tip how to publish a decent PDF on Windows?

[Anonymous]

I know it has been discussed but I've not seen a solution. The problem is this:
When published from Windows PCs the PDFs take minutes to open - if at all - and our associates are complaining. Since I am the only Mac user I'm constantly asked to republish everyone's files. What's puzzling is that pdfTron can generate a prime PDF on Mac and a useless one on Windows. The file size from Mac is also comparably small - 1.2 MB and on Windows 4.9! What's the deal?

[Barry Kelly]

So you are publishing using "Print" to a 3rd party PDF converter (PDFTron)?

I find it is best to publish with the "Save" option and change the file format to PDF.
This uses Archicad's built-in PDF converter.


Barry.

[Anonymous]

+1 for Barry’s comment printing to PDF does not typically produce good PDFs on windows in comparison to built in save as PDF

regards
Scott

[Anonymous]

I am saving as PDF using the built in converter PDFTron PDFNet V6.40292 which is the same on Mac and Windows.

[Barry Kelly]

subatomic wrote:
I am saving as PDF using the built in converter PDFTron PDFNet V6.40292 which is the same on Mac and Windows.

I am not a MAC user but that does not sound like the built-in Archicad PDF converter to me.

In your Publisher Properties, do you have it set to 'Save Files' (not Print), and then just change the file format to PDF in the publisher set.


Barry.

[DGSketcher]

@Barry, on Mac the AC Publisher pdf convertor name is exposed as PDFTron. I haven’t installed any third party publishers and that is what shows up in the published file metadata. Never had any reported issues with my AC Published files being opened on Windows. Looks like a Windows publishing issue...

[Anonymous]

Exactly, as the title suggests.
Apple does not even allow 3rd party pdf printers. FWIW this is a Teamwork project and everyone uses the same publisher settings, which is of course save files.

[Anonymous]

No one? Not even from Graphisoft?

[Lingwisyer]

pdfTron is a PDF SDK, so it is probably something to do with the coding side of GS. If it was written using a language not common between the two platforms, maybe someone did not implement the optimizer in the same way. Only someone from GS could answer this, unless you can access the backend of the PDFs or something.



Ling.

[Erwin Edel]

I wasn't aware that there are differences between PDF publishing on MAC and Windows.

I do know that using a lot of random dot pattern vectoricial (or otherwise 'busy' vectorial) fills makes for heavy and slow PDF and have adjusted to using these a bit more sparingly over the years.

Not saying there should be a difference, but as a workaround for the time being that might solve some problems.