Publish flattened PDFs - how?

[Anonymous]

Anyone have an easy workflow for this? Can publisher be set to do this?

We have clients and professional service bureaus who cannot print our PDF output. The Pros know what to do - the spend extra time flattening the PDFs so their giant machines can print.

Our clients are more up the creek - their printers repeatedly fail because of too many layers embedded in the PDF.

[Anonymous]

You might try lowering you file size by:
In publisher, select the file, Open Format: choose PDF,
Document Options, PDF Options, Reduce to B&W and Arch Resolution down to 300, if not already there.
That might help.
Don't know about layers in PDF's

[Djordje]

Invest in Adobe Acrobat and reduce the file size. You can do other stuff too.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your replies - appreciate it.

We're familiar and (reasonably) fluent with both the PDF settings in ArchiCAD and Acrobat Professional's "reduce file size" options.

The only thing that *reliably* works is flattening - CAD files are saved as PDF in a way I'm *not* familiar and fluent with - the PDF "feature" whereby layer information is retained.

Apparently it's this layer information embedded in the PDF that will choke a printer - not the aggregate file size - which can be actually quite small.

ArchiCAD would benefit from enhanced Distiller-like control to flatten a PDF as part of publishing set settings.