PDF Files are HUGE in v15

ChristopherH

 Just upgraded from v13 to v15 and now when I print to a PDF using PDF Creator, my PDF's are coming out to about 3.3MB compared to the previous 150K.  Print settings are all exactly the same so not sure what is going on.  Even the preview takes a while to load it's so large.

Oh, print settings are:

Paper Size: Ansi E

Plot Area: Window

Plot Scale: Fit Print

Plot style: Monochrome

Any suggestions?

Jeff Claunch

 Chris,

I am having similar problems and I am using PDF-Xchange.  Also, I am cannot seem to get the aspect ratio correct.  My circles are not round..

Hopefully this is a quick and easy fix!  I really like V15!

Jeff

Owen Wengerd

These forums are only for peer support. If you think the problem is with BricsCAD, you should submit a support request (with a small sample .dwg and steps to reproduce the problem, and in this case I recommend to include old and new .pdf files for comparison) so it can be addressed by Bricsys.

ChristopherH

I believe I have figured out the issue.  On the print screen dialog box, under Shaded Viewport Options, change the Shade plot to Legacy Wireframe and then it prints like it did back in v13.

Joe Dunfee

 I have been frustrated by PDF output for a few versions of BricsCAD. Though, I don't necessarily think it is BricsCAD's fault, since the types of problems I am having are things I have also seen in other CAD programs.  The main issues seems to be the way CAD programs handle objects in viewports when  the views are set to hidden line or any sort of shading.

In the world of CAD, of course, we prefer straight lines and not pixelated images.  And while all modern output is ultimately pixelated by the printer, it really is so fine that it is not an issue. But, it is common to see viewports with excessive pixelation. I realize that simply increasing the number of pixels saved to the PDF will improve the view, but at the expense of file size. 

The ideal solution is if somehow the view can be converted to a vector image.  Obviously, this can't really happen if the view is a continuous tone image. But, many rendering styles are not like that.  The non-legacy hidden lines removal is an obvious one, but there are shading styles that generate blocks of color that are a single shade.  I wonder why that sort of view cannot be converted to a vector image?

For other types of objects, such as embeded spreadsheets, I have also had pixelation issues.  However, in this case, the PDF X-change brand printer driver keeps the numbers as text, while the built-in PDF export for BricsCAD v14 wants to convert the numbers to a coarsely pixelated image.

PDF output has become the default method of archiving and exchanging CAD drawings.  I really wish it were better handled.  Though, I am not clear if the problems are inherent in the technology, or created by the choices made by the programmers.  I hope it is the 2nd, since that means the problems can eventually be fixed.

-Joe

Joe Dunfee

Just did some fresh experimenting with my v14 BricsCAD.  It showed that a viewport set to be legacy hidden was vector output when I use the native PDF publish function.  But, if I use PDF Creator printer driver, the results are rasterized, and quite significantly larger file size.

There does not seem to be a single solution that will do optimal PDF output for all content.  This includes embedded spreadsheets, attached PDFs, and hidden-line views. The native PDF export will rasterize some things that a printer driver won't, and vice versa.

-Joe

Joe Dunfee

 I am writing again, since I have a significant problem with the PDF and really need to find a solution.   The project I am on now use a lot of rectangular tube, which have rounded edges.  If I set the viewport to "legacy hidden", all the rounded surfaces are filled in solid, since this method creates a lot of tessellation lines.  The standard "hidden" rendering setting does not do that and only shows the outlines of the curved surfaces, as I would like, but that approach created raster images.

The drawing I have now is 20 pages.  The native export to PDF is perhaps 8 meg, but the images are totally unacceptable because of very coarse pixelation. If I print to PDF using PDF Xchange, the PDF is over 22 meg. I used PDF X Change Editor's optimization feature to reduce the resolution of the images to 150 PPI, and the JPG quality to 70.  Not really ideal, and I cannot go lower in resolution.  But, even these settings only reduces the 22 meg down to 18 meg.

Does anyone else have any ideas to look into?  Hopefully there may be a way to make the hidden view images into vector drawings when they are converted into PDFs.

Thanks for any leads,

-Joe

Michael Rock

 I had a problem yesterday with really huge PDF files, over 50MB, and I just want to share with you how I solved this, so maybe some of you wouldn't loose as much time as I did.

I found out that many lines were drawn with a different linetype, similar to hidden or center lines, but ltscale was so small that the lines appeared to be continuos. This appearently happened copying part of a cliente drawing into our drawing file.

Changing the linetype of all this lines to continuos, PDF file size dropped to less than 1% I had before. Probably also changing scale of those lines would have solved. 

The point is that PDF appearently creates lots of small seperate lines when using linetypes. So for reasonable PDF size avoid small scales of linetypes.