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Reducing PDF file Size


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Hi,

I am having difficulty publishing PDFs with usable file sizes of less than 10mb. 

I use Vectorworks Landmark 2018 and have explored both reducing DPI & downsampling image DPI and trying to reduce the file externally in Adobe Acrobat, however the best I can get is to around 12-15mb.

 

I create landscape plans (in colour) with a variety of hatches and transparencies, however not overly complex. 

 

The only thing that seems to work is to rasterise the text, which then gets me down to only 2-3mb, however this is not ideal as I'd prefer to have the text searchable within the PDF. 

 

Does anyone have any tips or found any easy fixes to this? I have a feeling it's something to do with the plant tags appearing over hatches or potentially the plant transparencies which make the PDF size really blow up, but not sure how to resolve this without impacting on the visual quality of the plans.

 

 

 

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I too do landscape work, often very large areas.

 

Do you have images that are larger than your viewports? Or is is this only images inside symbols - I've never needed that? For VPs vw puts the whole image into the pdf instead of cropping it to the VP - so i tile large images and even put each tile in its own class.

 

I use very few hatches as VP is inefficient with them and makes huge, slow to view pdfs.

 

I know its a hassle but sometimes I do stacked\overlayed VPs to reduce complexity of individual VPs.

 

I almost never reduce DPI and never have to rasterise text

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  • 1 year later...

I am a new Vectorworks user and am also faced with this dilema.  I just did a one sheet presentation of a small site with a small one story building (5,000 SF).  The sheet has 3 renderings - 2 exterior perspectives and one top view.  20.4 megs!!! I have also tried the reducing of dpi but that was fruitless.  Oh - The only text was labeling and titleblock. Very few trees, and entourage.  I am very disappointed in the ability to provide quick pdf presentations usable by my clients... 

Study A 09-13-2021.pdf

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Dennis:

Are you printing to PDF via the Publish command? You should be able to crush a PDF sheet reasonably well. If meant for viewing digitally, you can drop the DPI to 72 (I usually use 100), downsample images above say 300 dpi, and use a high compression. Alternatively, I've gotten in the habit of exporting using a medium compression, then compressing the PDF in acrobat (yeah drinking the adobe kool-aid). Works pretty well. I was able to drop your 20mb file to 1.8MB with Acrobat alone. Yeah its an extra step but acrobat does a better job in my experience. I'm sure there are others PDF options out there that don't require 50 + bucks a month subscription. Hope that helps

-J

Study A 09-13-2021.pdf

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Thank you!!  I tried compressing with Nitro PDF, but only gained a meg or so... 

The files are for sending to clients in pdf format via email for them to print locally.  Sometime I also need them for submitting to local authorities for color/material approvals.  I do not have a full version of Adobe Acrobat.  I will see what I can find that is reasonbly priced.

I missed the option for exporting using medium compression.  Is that in the Publish menu? Again, I am new to Vectorworks and still learing nomenclature, menus, etc.

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You can experiment with more compression in the Publish command to see what you get. Acrobat DC on its own is 15 bucks a month and should work across all your devices. I use it on my iPad as well as desktop.  In the grand scheme of things, that yeah while I don't like having to drink the kool-aid, I guess you have to ask is if it saves you time and pain, is it worth it. I think you can also buy a non subscription version for $350.  I use it all the time so its worth it to me. Its the nickel chasing a dollar thing. All that said the compression algorithms that were added by NNA were supposed to supplant this extra step. Best to play around with it before you decide. Adobe will do a 7 day trial I think.

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  • 1 year later...
On 9/16/2021 at 6:31 AM, Matt Overton said:

If on a Mac you can save as Postscript then double click the .ps file and preview will convert it to a PDF.

This is most effective when you have lots of layered transparency or other bitmap layering. 

Unfortunately, starting from Ventura, Apple Preview no longer handles PostScript Files (.PS). neither EPS

Edited by MarCur
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8 hours ago, E|FA said:

The two tools I use and recommend for PDF compression (and other tasks) on Mac are PDF Expert and PDF Toolkit+.  

PDF Expert is a good app but I've noticed that if the starting PDF is not already optimized (I mean something that has to do with PDF structure itself) It will not be able to reduce file size. And some times I've noticed that few files ends resulting few kbs larger than original!

 

In the past when dealing with Archicad I've experimented really smooth PDF publishing results, I'de say way better,

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Hello.  I am also having problems with large pdf file sizes.  We often have to upload drawings on to local authority planning portals and these need to be smaller file sizes.  I have just downloaded the PDF expert to see if that would work.  On a drawing which had images it has reduced the size.  But on a drawing with no images, a planting plan with 2 schedules it cannot reduce it down from the original size of 5.7MB.  

 

In Vectorworks we normally set the DPI to 300 as we use hatches and tiles too.  So I tried setting the dpi to 100 (on the sheet and on the document preferences) but the pdf is the same as at 300DPI.  I have used the publish command not the export command.  

 

I cannot see how you can 'crush' the pdfs within the publish command.

 

Any recommendations much appreciated.

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I struggle with reducing the file size of PDFs with lots of 2D geometry too. All I know to do is lower the publish DPI: 72dpi at a minimum + sometimes less if I can get away with it. But often I end up with 12MB PDFs + have to live with it. Be glad to know if there's anything else I could be doing.

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Another question is about how the pdf files open.  They open slowly in sections as if they have layers.  This is slow and cumbersome, particularly if there are a lot of files to look through and the client is not clear which ones he needs to open.  

 

Is there some way to flatten the pdf so that it opens faster?  We are just looking for an image that the client can open.  

 

Sometimes I export the file as a jpeg and then export the jpeg back to a pdf.  This helps reduce the file size but then it seems that the size of the drawing (A1, A3 etc) is lost and so they don't always print to the correct size.  And people also sometimes have problems printing them on an A3 sheet (they rotate and loose areas etc). These are clients with no technical knowledge, so it needs to work and be simple.

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Be aware that VW does not crop image/raster at the VP line, if I have an image much larger than VP I tile it and put each image in its own class.

 

I try and limit pages with images on them.

Avoid large areas of hatch (as VW is VERY inneficient with that), ditto  for stipples.

 

With image pages I export image at A3 page size and 300dpi (as per settings in image export), and reimport to a non-print A3-size polygon frame in model space and then send that to a VP, tedious but I get small pages with high definition and true to scale thatt load quickly as pdf on client machines.

 

Occasionally I use pdf995 but find this is less needed with 2018 compared to older versions.

 

I'm using 2018, so ymmv.

 

 

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15 minutes ago, unearthed said:

Avoid large areas of hatch (as VW is VERY inneficient with that)

 

This is the killer for me. And just loads of 2D linework generally. Images I can easily compress afterwards using ILovePDF but the big 2D PDFs I can do nothing with after the fact. But then I've got consultants sending me 30MB+ reports so I figure what's so bad if I produce the odd 15MB drawing myself...? Not ideal but at the same time there is no restriction on uploading files this size to my LPA portal.

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3 hours ago, unearthed said:

Avoid large areas of hatch (as VW is VERY inneficient with that), ditto  for stipples.

 

Is VW really that bad with Hatches and Line Types ?

 

I think it is more the PDF format and printers, that may be able to load fonts but maybe

not things like Hatches for more efficient handling.

In a way like VW makes use of Symbols or Hatch definitions for repeating elements (?)

 

So finally each dot and line segment ends as a separate vector object like it may happen

with some imperfect DWG/DXF exports or imports exploding hatches and lines (?)

Have had that with some Revit imports a few years ago.

And this does slow down VW (or any CAD's) performance.

 

Edited by zoomer
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Two factors worth considering when discussing PDF file sizes.

 

The File Size Reduction setting in the publish dialog works well.

Usually High and even Maximum gives acceptable results and has good impact on PDF file size 

Skjermbilde2023-07-01kl_12_30_25.thumb.png.4474011d14bc4af07470e5427f4df743.png

I have also learned that viewports should have a fill. If a viewport is selected and the attribute pallet is with none fill it will be larger in export.

I recently went through a set with dozen of sheets and changed the viewports fill from none to white and the final pdf binder was half the size of the first one

 

Skjermbilde2023-07-01kl_12_39_02.png.eca8e9377b196a95667dda98a661b328.png

 

 

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8 hours ago, Tom W. said:

Yes because it affects navigation/zooming on sheet layer too...

 

 

I thought these were already typical CAD problems with available

hardware in the 80ies and 90ies, so already highly optimized.

Therefore would not have expected 2D problems with current

way more capable GPU hardware and graphic APIs .....

 

Wasn't there also another VW VGM update to accelerate especially

SLVP navigation 1-2 years ago (?)

(For 3D, VW 3D View capability felt always top of the line)

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