Printing a pdf from a large civil3d file, to large to handle

[George-Handley]

Hey guys,

I am having trouble working with a large civil3d file.  

My issue is that when I print a pdf file from my dwg file (which is apprix 140mb large), the pdf file that comes out is more than 30mbs.  My work laptop can't handle a pdf file this size, let alone print it or email it.

I am after some advice on working with large civil3d files (it is the surface model of some scan data which is slowing it down).  I can accept that the civil3d file is large and difficult to do work with quickly, but not being able to print out a pdf file which i can easily send to my client is very annoying.

Please select the following link (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9908922/Large%20autocad%20files.zip) to download my dwg file and pdf files.  Warning that the total file size is approx 300mbs.  

So just to repeat, I am chasing advice on:

 - working with a large dwg file, I am dealing with surface models generated from scan data.

 - how to print a small pdf file from my dwg file.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

George

[dasindog]

George, I'm downloading now. Will let you know if I have any suggestions.

[George-Handley]

Wow very prompt Dustin!  Like I said any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ToddRogers-WPM]

Try these settings...

http://totalcad.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/fix-for-out-of-memory-errors-due-to-large-image-files/

[dasindog · Accepted solution]

George, Hope this helps. I've run into this same issue and haven't attempted to do what Todd suggested so that may be a better "fix". What I like to do is once the large PDF has been created, export it from Adobe Acrobat as a high resolution JPG. This gets rid of all the massive data that autocad creates when printing elevation banding. Then using Acrobat again convert the JPG to a PDF and the file size is quite minimal. See attached. I used a JPG medium quality setting and ended up with a 400KB document instead of the 30MB. 

[antoniovinci]

I think rasterizing a vector map (specially in a lossy format as JPEG) is definetely never a good idea, sir.

You should try to set a lower resolution in your PDF virtual printer, increasing it gradually up to the desired compromise.

[George-Handley]

Thanks for that Dustin.  That's what I was looking for.  I was trying to compress the pdf file but it kept crashing my computer, didn't even think about exporting it.

[George-Handley]

Thanks for the link Todd.  When I get more time i'm going to go through those settings and see if it helps me.  I'm always cautious about getting too deep in civil3d settings, i don't want to break it!

[Joe-Bouza]

In addition to the other advice For the heck of it, 300MB dwg  sounds like there may be some header issues; try Audit purge all purge regapp, wblocking the file contents out and see if comes down some

[George-Handley]

Thanks for that Joseph.  I did try that initially on the lowest DPI setting but it didn't change it to significantly for me.  I might try it again just to check i was doing it correctly.

[HFA.Bobby.Solis]

Todd - I tried your suggestion by changing RASTERPERCENT and RASTERTHRESH with very little file size change. Original file 2,444KB and adjusted file size 2,395KB. Not sure why we're getting Civil PDFs this large. Our standard Arch and MEP sheets are ranging from 100KB to 600KB. My search continues.

[ToddRogers-WPM]

Do they have images in them?

[HFA.Bobby.Solis]

Yes, there are 5 different images.