Publish to pdf results in large file size

[taliho]

Hi-

 

My typical file size for a project is about 220MB - when I publish to pdf I get on average a 16MB file.

This particular Vectorworks file is 168MB  - but publishing to pdf results in 129MB file.

 

Any idea what can be causing this? I have deleted imported bitmaps, pdfs, sketchup and dwg and no significant changes in the resulting file size.  I quit and restarted - That made the Vectorworks filer larger (?)

 

Thanks

 

Tali

Edited January 15 by taliho
Added info

[line-weight]

Excessively large PDFs has been a problem with VW for years. There was a another thread about it just yesterday. And that thread has links to other threads.

 

https://forum.vectorworks.net/index.php?/topic/113794-pdfs-tips-for-reducing-size-scrolling-speed/#comment-494791

 

Maybe complain to your VW distributor. Perhaps if enough people complain about this they'll think about fixing it one day.

[rDesign]

As that other thread suggests — dense hatches, patterns, tiles can all contribute to large, bloated PDFs.

[taliho]

Thanks for the link-

I will continue my updates there.

 

In a test file I systematically and cumulatively removed imported bitmaps, also tried deleting the title block,( since individual sheet exports to pdf were over 30MB, and the TB was the only common object). I changed the resolution in publish pdf options. all these steps reduced slightly. The biggest drop was when I changed every viewport to "solid"  - the resulting published pdf dropped from 103MB to 20MB.  However, back to the original file, when I only changed the viewports to solid, there was no change in the size of the resulting pdf....

So many non-billable hours...... and no progress towards my deadline.....

[Christiaan]

Out of curiosity, run your PDFs through iLovePDF. Choose "Recommended compression". This software has become an integral part of our workflow. I gave up on trying to get VW to produce small PDFs.

 

Though, as others allude to, it may not help if the core problem is dense hatches.

[_James]

3 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

his software has become an integral part of our workflow. I gave up on trying to get VW to produce small PDFs.

Same here!

 

I know there are so many options and granularity with VW's exports but 95% of people don't care. I just want to attach it to an email and not make the client wait 2 minutes for it to download.

[thinkingpencil]

2 hours ago, taliho said:

Thanks for the link-

I will continue my updates there.

 

In a test file I systematically and cumulatively removed imported bitmaps, also tried deleting the title block,( since individual sheet exports to pdf were over 30MB, and the TB was the only common object). I changed the resolution in publish pdf options. all these steps reduced slightly. The biggest drop was when I changed every viewport to "solid"  - the resulting published pdf dropped from 103MB to 20MB.  However, back to the original file, when I only changed the viewports to solid, there was no change in the size of the resulting pdf....

So many non-billable hours...... and no progress towards my deadline.....

|I sympathise with those non-billable hours! Over the years I've found they do reduce as I've learned...often thanks to the regulars here who share their expertise to generously. If you are not already doing this :- I use reference files and try to limit the use of certain imported library objects for example catalogue furniture. Whilst the modelling of these is often very accurate they are necessarily complex and so add to file size. I offer apology in advance if I am stating the obvious 😀

[Tom W.]

26 minutes ago, Christiaan said:

Though, as others allude to, it may not help if the core problem is dense hatches.

 

Unfortunately this is correct. It's great for reducing size of raster geometry but does nothing if you have a ton of vector geometry, whether that's Hatches or just tons of polys... 

[Pat Stanford]

Did anything in your file come from AutoCAD? Especially Hatches?

 

In the bad old days the way to create a solid "fill" in AutoCAD was to create a hatch with many parallel lines with large line weights. This resulted in hundreds or thousands of individual lines to "fill" a single shape.

 

Newer version of AC now have true filled shape capability, but occasionally you may still come across someone who has not learnt the new way or who started with a drawing that was done the old way and end up with a difficult file.

 

Just a possibility.

 

[line-weight]

Exporting to PDF is such a core part of pretty much everyone's workflow these days, it's very poor that VW show no interest in addressing this issue. There have been so many threads about this over the years. Never do I recall a response from anyone at VW acknowledging that it's even a problem. And parallel to this is the fact that publishing to PDF can mess up colours in images.

[taliho]

@Pat Stanford - just saw your comment - so I deleted the site survey layer . -does the 'corruption' stay even when the object is removed?

Typically I import any dwg, rvt and skp files into an empty file, clean up/reduce meshes etc as best I can and then copy into my working file. 

 

This is a single story single family home. All slabs walls and roofs are on the same design layer

I don't have many hatches at all, but I deleted all my 2D details that use hatches and  tiles

I've changed the rendering style to hidden line with no hatches 

deleted all symbols: furniture, appliances, plumbing fixtures. (just in case I forgot one that came from skp)

deleted entourage

deleted wall materials

deleted heliodon and lights

deleted cameras

and purged the file

I'm at 100MB pdf. 

 

I removed all the design layers except the model layer (no impact)

 

I removed all text blocks (notes, legends etc) from the sheets

Dropped to 40MB

 

Back to the original file, removing all the text blocks (without all the other measures I've tried over the last 2 days)  - PDF size dropped by 50MB. These are same notes that I have been using in previous project files with no issue. I've been using Tekton fonts for 25 years.

The original file is now 72MB with no notes and annotations, if I rasterize when publishing I get 43.7MB

 

 

Still trying to find "the lion in the desert"......

I may just have to rebuild this file

 

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, taliho said:

@Pat Stanford - just saw your comment - so I deleted the site survey layer . -does the 'corruption' stay even when the object is removed?

Typically I import any dwg, rvt and skp files into an empty file, clean up/reduce meshes etc as best I can and then copy into my working file. 

 

This is a single story single family home. All slabs walls and roofs are on the same design layer

I don't have many hatches at all, but I deleted all my 2D details that use hatches and  tiles

I've changed the rendering style to hidden line with no hatches 

deleted all symbols: furniture, appliances, plumbing fixtures. (just in case I forgot one that came from skp)

deleted entourage

deleted wall materials

deleted heliodon and lights

deleted cameras

and purged the file

I'm at 100MB pdf. 

 

I removed all the design layers except the model layer (no impact)

 

I removed all text blocks (notes, legends etc) from the sheets

Dropped to 40MB

 

Back to the original file, removing all the text blocks (without all the other measures I've tried over the last 2 days)  - PDF size dropped by 50MB. These are same notes that I have been using in previous project files with no issue. I've been using Tekton fonts for 25 years.

The original file is now 72MB with no notes and annotations, if I rasterize when publishing I get 43.7MB

 

 

Still trying to find "the lion in the desert"......

I may just have to rebuild this file

 

 

I don't think you should rebuild your file. I don't think there's anything wrong with your file - there's something wrong with the way VW creates PDFs. You would be better investing your time in finding a PDF size reducer, for example the one recommended by @Christiaan above. Because you will likely have this problem with most VW files.

[line-weight]

On 1/16/2024 at 6:25 PM, Christiaan said:

Out of curiosity, run your PDFs through iLovePDF. Choose "Recommended compression". This software has become an integral part of our workflow. I gave up on trying to get VW to produce small PDFs.

 

I have used other compression apps but haven't tried this one until just now. Gave it a 28MB PDF created by VW and it compressed it to 550k with no noticeable loss of quality.

 

The fact that this is possible, to me is a clear demonstration that VW's PDF export doesn't work properly.

 

Sort it out, VW!

[taliho]

@line-weight - yes, for sure....

 

I did find out that by rasterizing I could drop the whole file down to 18MB (From 129MB!).  I think print quality is not impacted. 

I will keep working on the original file...

 

But - I am most curious why this particular file is behaving this way, while another project that has practically all the same objects, renderings and imports, and is by now 220MB, will export to pdf, with no necessary adjustments , to 16MB. Up til now I though 16MB was acceptable - this thread and all the contributors (thank you all!) are telling me I should be targeting much smaller exports.

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

I don't think you should be targeting much smaller exports with the current version(s) of VW.  You should be looking for a workflow (like an external compressor) that can take the VW export and reduce it to something more manageable.

 

VW does not do a particularly good job on file compression.

 

But then neither does Adobe. I have found 3rd party compression will sometimes greatly decrease file sized over what Optimize PDF does in Adobe Acrobat. Or at least used to.  Since it went subscription I have gone in a different direction.

[unearthed]

21 minutes ago, taliho said:

@line-weight - yes, for sure....

 

I did find out that by rasterizing I could drop the whole file down to 18MB (From 129MB!).  I think print quality is not impacted. 

I will keep working on the original file...

 

But - I am most curious why this particular file is behaving this way, while another project that has practically all the same objects, renderings and imports, and is by now 220MB, will export to pdf, with no necessary adjustments , to 16MB. Up til now I though 16MB was acceptable - this thread and all the contributors (thank you all!) are telling me I should be targeting much smaller exports.

 

 

Tedious as it sounds I often make an image of the page image contents ie all visual raster content and just have my vector linework in a viewport as an overlay - but I don't do renderworks / digital rendering so I can do this without affecting my output style.

 

I've been a VW user since '04 and do think it can produce small files but I think the strength is in the name: it's Vectorworks, not rasterworks or allthingsworks, it does do vectors very well (as long as you only use hatches and stipples cautiously). Anything raster (or huge spatially) I do in QGIS or an image editor.

 

My main large file issie is where there's a raster image with content outside the viewport - as VW does not clip this it can make for huge files, so I tile large images and put each tile in its own class - or make an image of the sheet view and drop back onto sheet - VW could make a lot of this much more seamless but they just endlessly add nonsense bells and whistles - it's annoying.

 

If VW is being a real pain I use pdf995 but I find with 2018 it's very good - I have a license upto 2022 but have no use for the extra capability so won't change until I do need that.

[Amanda McDermott]

I've only scanned this thread, but have you tried different export techniques to compare? I find 'Publish' results in much smaller PDFs than 'Export'. 'Print' to our PDF software comes in somewhere between the two and offers more options for tweaking export quality etc.

[Travis]

9 hours ago, Amanda McDermott said:

I've only scanned this thread, but have you tried different export techniques to compare? I find 'Publish' results in much smaller PDFs than 'Export'. 'Print' to our PDF software comes in somewhere between the two and offers more options for tweaking export quality etc.

When VW output to PDF is suddenly larger than I expect, I first try 'Print to PDF' on MacOS. Nearly always—tho not always— that file is smaller but it doesn't do as well w/ raster content.

We run every PDF thru a spin-cycle (3rd-party compression) unless it's already under 1mg. I know our clients prefer small files as much as we do.

[line-weight]

"Print to pdf" can sometimes be better and it doesn't cause the colour issues I mentioned above either. However, it's not a useful alternative if you are publishing a drawing set with tens or hundreds of sheets - in that case you need to use the publish command. And if (as is sometimes the case) you want to publish each sheet as an individual file, then passing all those through a third party compression programme is rather tedious.

[line-weight]

On 1/17/2024 at 10:39 PM, unearthed said:

My main large file issie is where there's a raster image with content outside the viewport - as VW does not clip this it can make for huge files, so I tile large images and put each tile in its own class - or make an image of the sheet view and drop back onto sheet - VW could make a lot of this much more seamless but they just endlessly add nonsense bells and whistles - it's annoying.

 

Also when a large image file is scaled down in a viewport, VW somehow still includes the whole of the original file in the pdf. If you manually adjust the resolution of the image in the viewport this can reduce the pdf size. But it's really stupid that we should have to do this manually.

[frv]

Just tried https://www.ilovepdf.com.  Its free actually.

That's how I will work from now on. Had a 129Mb pdf file for a permit just reduced to 8,7Mb with ilovepdf.  Could not find any difference really even looking closely at both files. Thanks for the tip Christiaan, this is going to make things really easy being able to just mail rather large VW pdf's with dozens of pages compressed to under 10Mb.