PDF Purgatory

[PB]

We are now on Archicad 29 and PDF creation is as painful as ever !

What is the point of having image textures (which are great for bringing the project to life on screen) when PDF output is so problematic? Currently trying to publish drawing sets and complete BIMx sets and every time the publication process hangs as soon as it reaches the first sheet of sections/elevations. We can, painstakingly, publish them one sheet at a time. However, every attempt to publish a set hangs (spinning beach ball). Perhaps it would eventually publish if left to run for a sufficiently long spell but that ties up the workstation.

I'm not sufficiently technically knowledgeable to know why Archicad PDFs are so large, cumbersome, & problematic, but its driving us insane...and its hardly a new problem. (layers & project info deselected, images & curves limited to 150dpi. Lossless images compression)

...A3 sheet with 4 sections of a small project hangs publication. Published individually it gives a 26MB file that both Preview and Nitro PDF Pro struggle to open.

Are we missing something? Doesn't everyone come across this problem? And, why on earth hasn't it been resolved yet?

Any advice that might help, please?

Edit:

Graphisoft: Please add the option to publish "flattened" PDF files to a user defined resolution. Would this not resolve a large part of the problem, and let us benefit properly from the "surfaces" in Archicad?

[PB]

Thank you Eduardo for the heads-up on Affinity: It looks most interesting. I shall explore to see if it can open the Archicad PDFs quicker Pixelmator.

[alexliz]

Hi Eduardo, is it 'Affinity Studio' or just 'Affinity'? Also: please could you share the settings you use for reducing PDF size? Thank you.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Just Affinity.

• Open the PDF
• Select Export as PDF and change the settings
  • Save these settings as a favorite.

[alexliz]

Thanks Eduardo.

I tried twice, each time with different settings (always flattening, reducing dpi etc) but ended up with larger file size.

[PB]

An update from our search for a solution.

Graphisoft UK suggested looking at printing to a virtual PDF printer. We cannot find one that will print to flattened or rasterised PDF on MacOS 26. Having turned to Perplexity, it stated:

"The verdict for your Archicad workflow:
These virtual printers solve zero problems for your “one hour to generate + one hour to open” pain.

You still pay Archicad’s vector-generation penalty upfront, then get vector PDFs that Preview chokes on. Graphisoft’s “print to virtual PDF printer” advice works conceptually but fails practically because no maintained Mac driver offers “flatten entire page to 300dpi bitmap” in its PPD options.
Your actual solution path
Stick with your proven Pixelmator Pro workflow + automation. It’s the only reliable way to:
1. Let Archicad Publisher create vector masters (unavoidable upfront cost)
2. Rasterize downstream at exactly 300dpi color (seconds per page)"

Does anyone know of a virtual printer for MacOS that would output directly to flattened or rasterised PDF?

Graphisoft UK's perspective: "Archicad’s PDF output is intentionally vector‑based, mainly so the PDFs remain editable, scalable, and reusable inside CAD/BIM workflows rather than being treated as static images. Flattening/rasterising is mainly a print‑production need; Graphisoft positions Archicad as a BIM authoring tool and leaves specialised pre‑press tasks (flattening, colour management, imposition) to downstream PDF or graphics applications."

Perplexity's description of Archicad's PDF publishing:

"Archicad’s vector PDFs are technically correct but computationally insane for certain orthogonal views"

Seems to me that Archicad does not need to generate and save into the PDF the huge amount of hidden data (lines, fills, textures), and that there should be an accurate publishing process to jpeg/tiff/png that does not add a border around a layout sheet.

[Lingwisyer]

The issue I find with using PDF printers is that AC's fills often do not play nice with them. I have Acrobat and Cute, and I get different artifacts between them...

[Botonis]

It is obvious that having a vector based exporting keeps a certain usability for further editing. Like measuring in Bluebeam....

But this is just one scenario.

What about just sharing pdfs for viewing or presentation reasons. I had cases where the pdf couldn't be opened with a low end pc.

This is why there should be an option of vector based or rasterization export inside Archicad withouth having to batch convert in other software....

This would solve the problem somehow.

[Lingwisyer]

PLUS usability being reusable within CAD/BIM workflows, MINUS being able to open said PDF for use.

[alexliz]

If it helps anyone: I have been able to get good results reducing the size and complexity of a PDF drawing generated by Archicad 28 on macOS via a simple Terminal command. The resulting PDF is not necessarily much smaller in MB on the hard disk, but it does open up A LOT faster in Preview or other PDF viewers, plus the HP large format printer starts printing it out a lot faster (previously I have had to wait for up to 5 minutes or more for the printer to start printing after I've clicked Print).

This will work on an Intel Mac and you will need to have Ghostscript installed (if you haven't, then simply paste the following command without the quotation marks into Terminal and wait for the few minutes it will take to download and install it while also giving you text feedback on your screen: "brew install ghostscript").

If you are on an Apple Silicon Mac, then it's a slightly different command, that's all.

Assuming the drawing is located in the Mac user's Home Folder and it is named "input.pdf", the following command will recreate it and name the result "output.pdf". Here it is, just copy the text and paste it all in one go in your Terminal:

gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE \

   -sDEVICE=pdfimage24 \

   -r240 \

   -dAlignToPixels=0 \

   -dGridFitTT=2 \

   -dTextAlphaBits=4 \

   -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 \

   -o output.pdf input.pdf

[Brad Elliott]

Pdf Expert recently? released a mac version of their I device pdf software. I downloaded it after Preview kept failing to save changes to a document. It does have Flattened and Reduced Size options that I have found to work fairly well. They have a 7 day free trial but you have to give a card and go in and cancel if you don't want it. Same crap that goes on with all software now. 

I think I am going to keep it for a year because it's seeming like a pretty good Bluebeam lite and Preview has wasted too much of my time.