PDF output problem

[kevin b]

We are an all Mac office. Most of our consultants are Windows. Since the release of AC12 we are having issues sending PDFs of our drawings to consultants/contractors.

The PDFs they receive now appear OK onscreen but when they try to print, they are taking 10-15 minutes each if they print at all. We have been running test with a consultant we have used for years who has never had issues in the past and PDFs made with AC11 print in under a minute, even the same file saved as AC11. And it is not just this consultant, or one particular project file. And it is only PDFs we are sending out that are made from ArchiCAD, all other PDFs to them are OK.

The same PDFs print in-house fine.

Anyone else having these issues? Know a cause or a fix or a work around?

[Thomas Holm]

I think it's weird if this happens with ALL pdfs you produce. Could it be that you have a less-than-ideally-optimized logo or something on your master layouts?

Anyway, I find AC12's pdfs are often better than AC11's. If you have bitmapped images (photos, scanned maps etc) you should if possible insert them as high-quality jpgs instead of tiffs, and turn off transparency if possible. If you have inserted PDFs, note that they may contain images like the above that may be problematic.

Sometimes it helps to open Archicad's output pdf through Adobe Acrobat (full commercial version). In the File menu, there is a Shrink File (or similar) command that may help. It optimizes the pdf.

[gpowless]

After all my printers stopped working recently and after spending hours trying to trouble shoot between the hardware manufacturer (who was blaming the operating system) and Microsoft (who was blaming the hardware), I discovered that it was in fact Adobe Reader version 8. something stopping the printers from spooling. After an upgrade to Reader 9.0 the problems mysteriously disappeared.

[Anonymous]

You do a Save as...PDF file?
Long ago I did some tests and didn't like the results. Today I only print to a PDF printer. Works much better.
I'm on Windows now so I use the DoPDF (www.dopdf.com) printer. And it's free.
The OSX have a built in feature. Quite simple but works fine too.