How to lighten the archicad file and export in PDF

[Anonymous]

Hello,

For I don't what reason, my AC file, for a little building, weights 60M??? and when I export my sections and détails, the pdf file weights 20M...
My question is how to lighten the archicad file and lighten the export in PDF?

Thanks in avance

[Anonymous]

There are 2 quick fixes in Edit > Reshape. Fill Consolidation and Linework Consolidation. Try running those, they may help if there's a lot of 2D information.

You may have a few very complex 3D objects. Look at the size of any custom objects/imported libraries. You can always run the Polygon Counting Tool on some objects in 3D (available from Help > ArchiCAD Goodies). 3D trees shown in section views are quite size heavy, try replacing any with 2D symbols. Also i've found in the past that transparent fills make pdfs very large, so avoid using 50% etc fills.

Or failing that, depending on how complex your model is, you can try just copying and pasting your building information into a new blank file.

Hope that helps

[Anonymous]

20mb for a pdf sounds a little excessive! Is this just for a single page, or are there lots of pages? One thing to check is your usage of symbolic fills (and the newer image fills), as these can really start to increase the file size. This ArchiCAD Wiki article explains it better -

http://www.archicadwiki.com/PDF%20file%20size%20and%20Fill%20choice

Photographs can also increase the file size of pdfs especially is they are high resolution. One simple way to help this is to save a lower resolution version for use on the layouts.

If you're still struggling to reduce the size, maybe post a screenshot of one of the pdfs and we might get a better idea of what the problem is.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.
I'll try some of your hints later on.

As soon as I resolve the problem I'll let you know )

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I've worked on it : for the copy et paste method, it indeed reduces half the file size (50M to 22M), but the the same PDF export weights as much (20M)???

It seems not to be related to the file size but the content of the drawings. On the other hand, it's just an A1 format with détails of 1/20 and 1/50 scales...

What makes it so heavy ...it's really strange...

[Anonymous]

Your image is a little too small to see any detail, to be honest. Can you post a close up of just one area perhaps? Maybe through one of the main sections as those areas of grey hatching look interesting! Are they solid hatch or a dense vectorial/symbolic hatch?

Also, how are you creating the pdf? Are you using the publisher/save-as method built in to ArchiCAD, or are you using a pdf printer like Amyuni, or CutePDF?

Another method you could use to help work out what the problem is, is to duplicate that particular layout, and then delete one View from it at a time, then save a pdf from it. Do this for each view, then check the size of the pdfs to see if one particular View is causing the file size to increase excessively.

[Barry Kelly]

spacytime wrote:
Hi,

I've worked on it : for the copy et paste method, it indeed reduces half the file size (50M to 22M), but the the same PDF export weights as much (20M)???

It seems not to be related to the file size but the content of the drawings. On the other hand, it's just an A1 format with détails of 1/20 and 1/50 scales...

What makes it so heavy ...it's really strange...

As you noted it is not the PLN file size that determines the PDF size but what you have in the drawing you are saving as a PDF.

As Peter suggested symbolic fills are good for increasing the file size.
Also images (JPG's etc.) for logos can increase PDF size dramatically.

The built in PDF convertor does not do a good job of compressing the file when you publish a PDF.
You can control the DPI of the PDF output - the higher the DPI the bigger the file.

External PDF printers will compress the file more and will give you the smallest file.

Barry.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Here is an article on ArchiCADWiki that may help.
It is about Fills and their effect on PDF size:

http://www.archicadwiki.com/PDF%20file%20size%20and%20Fill%20choice

[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot.

Definitely, it is the fills that make the pdf file so heavy. When I 've removed all the fills, the 20M pdf file is reduced to 3M. I think perhaps the drawing scale enters in consideration as well. Since the detail drawings are in 1/20 or 1/50, fills occupy more space than if they were in 1/100 scale.

Anyway, thank you guys, you've been helpful.