Publishing to a PDF is EXTREMELY SLOW, Civil 3D 2014 SP#2

[Tentie]

I have a drawing which is just over 1Mb in size, which has 2 other drawings Xreff'ed into it. Those drawings are 12Mb and 1Mb in size. My drawing has 150 layout tabs. If I try to publish to a PDF file, it takes over 15 hours to complete the process. If I try to pulish in the background, it spins for hours and does nothing. If I manually print 1 layout page, it works fine and takes only a few seconds (maybe 30 to 45 seconds). This used to work perfectly in Civil 3D 2013, taking about 30 minutes to publish in the background. Now when I do it in Civil 3D 2014 SP#2, it takes forever. My computer is not a slouch but not a speed deamon either. Windows 7 64bit, 8Gb ram. Do I simply need more horse power? If so, how muc is required to do this process efficiently? I have tried other drawings and most give the same speed issue. Being this just seemed to start as of our upgrade to 2014, is there a setting or something that I have missed? This is really a pain as I now have to publish over night, and hope it completes by the next morning, and that the power does not go out over night. I need some help PLEASE!!!! Thanks in advance, Glen

[Jay_B]

Glen,

We have had similar issues when printing to pdf using the DWG to PDF.pc3 , using SSM w/Page setup overrides.

What seems to trigger the slowness AFAIK is the file sizes. We have one project with several large files attached as xref's and

it takes 6 to 10 minutes per page to plot to pdf.

A very convoluted workaround you may want to give a try is to install DWG Trueview 2014 (it's free) but prints

incredibly faster than C3d 2014 does and it will batch plot as well.

It was night and day speed difference here on above referenced project.

[Tentie]

It sounds like we are on the same page for the speed issue. I have DWG True View 2014 here already but had never thought about using it to print the PDF files. I will give it a go. If nothing else, it will free up my Civil 3D so I can get some other work done while True View plots in the background. FYI - I have been plotting for 15 minutes and it is only on page 2 so far - so it may not be much quicker afterall, but as I said, at least I can still use AutoCAD while it is chugging away. Thank you for the suggestion as it has helped, even if it is a "very convoluted work around" 🙂 If anyone else has anything else to try - please fire away! Cheers, Glen

[capt.crayola]

I would recommend using a third party PDF converter. I've never had much luck with DWG to PDF.pc3 or Adobe, but I've had consistant success with CutePDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/)

[rl_jackson]

You actually have a drawing with 150 layout tabs. If so that's your problem.

Use SSM and have one layout tab per drawing/sheet and I bet the time goes down to about 2 hours (give or take)

[Tentie]

I am not sure what you mean by SSM? So are you suggesting that I create 150 drawings with 1 layout tab in each, then print from 150 drawings to create a single multipage PDF file? This drawing contains a large Xref with multple layers that need to be controlled in each layout tab via viewports. I can't see how your option would help, unless I am missing something major. Can you fill me in with details of what you are suggesting, please? I have created drawings with many layout tabs for years and never had this issue before. This issue actually started when this drawing only had 64 layout tabs after I upgraded to C3D 2014. In C3D 2013 it worked like a charm, printing in about 30 minutes for the 64 tabs. - I am going to try a different PDF print driver tomorrow. - The DWG True View is not any faster - It has been running for 5 hours now and it has only 48 pages complete. Cheers,

[rl_jackson]

This AU paper should help.

[rl_jackson]

You should limit drawing to a maximum of 10 layouts anymore than that and you begin to effect performance.

[Tentie]

Thank you - I will read this and see if I can follow and then implement it, as appropriate. Cheers,

[dgorsman]

If not affecting your own performance, then potentially those downstream users who consume the content.  Also poses some risk if the drawing is corrupted - you've just lost *everything*, not just a handful of layouts.

[Joe-Bouza]

to add to the others: you might consider editing the DWGtoPDF.pc3 file and lowere the resolution until the results are acceptable

[Tentie]

From what I have read and played with so far, SSM seems to be a glorified front end access menu. If I had multiple drawings each with a handfull of layout tabs, to for a larger project which needed to have all of the layout tabs in all of the drawings, plotted as one project, then it looks like it could work. I have a single drawing requiring multiple layout tabs, each with an appropriate viewport, to all be plotted as the project. This seems to be of no benifit to place them in the SSM, in this case. To do what others have suggested, I would need to save this drawing 10 time (or more) and eliminate the redundant layouts in each drawing, so each drawing had the 10 or so unique tabs in it. Then load all of the drawings/layouts into the SSM for plotting purposes. This would be a pain when I need to work on all of the drawings to make the same change to all layouts, it would load each drawing independantly, thereby forcing me to make the same change in every drawing. So now I have to edit every drawing in the same way, then plot them all via SSM. So I have to do the same edit in each one with the chance that I miss something in one. Also, the plotting via SSM still uses the exact same options that the regular AutoCAD does for publishing, which ties up the plotting options on that machine. So even if I need to open a different job and plot from it, I can't because my machine is tied up doing the publish command from SSM. So far the best solution for me is to use DWG TrueView to publish independantly from AutoCAD. This des not tie up any plotting options in AutoCAD. I have not been anble to try other PDF drivers due to our IT not installing them (they control all installs to our networked computers), but I am still following this option up to see if that would help speed things up at all either via AutoCAD or TrueView. Am I still missing something here? Comments? Thanks,

[Tentie]

I will examine the editing of the PC3 file and see if this helps at all. Thanks,

[rl_jackson]

Sometimes you have to think outside the box. It doesn't sound like you using the plan production tools in Civil 3D either, if you did you would see the benifit of it.

I only do survey work. And I use plan production, by making a no display alignment around the perimeter of my site, that sets up my sheets on large boundary surveys.

Let the software work for you not work for it.

When using SSM everything is XREF'd into your sheet file and you have a modify just your model files. This updates all the sheets.

[Tentie · Accepted solution]

The forum sent me an automated message asking if a solution had been found. In my opinion, no good solution works for me however all of the assistance was helpful. SSM was not a solution due to the way this drawing works and what we require (we already have pretty much everything xref'ed to speed things up and keep files smaller). Printing using another PDF driver did not see any speed difference (I tried CutePDF and PDFCreator). The one think that at least freed up my AutoCAD is the ability to print using DWG TrueView. That was no faster, in fact it took longer, but at least my AutoCAD was freed up. I do thank everyone for their input and I hope Autodesk changes things to make it work as fast as it used to in 2013 being the slowdown happened in the upgrade to 2014. I wish they would stop "fixing" things that were not broken! Cheers,

[Joe-Bouza]

Hello Glen

If this is not a solution should it not be marked as one? When the automated question comes you can reply "No" and often the thres is escalated and a support specialist may contact you for resolution.

[Tentie]

Fair enough - As I summarized, no real solution has been provided but work arounds have helped. How do you deselect this as the solution now?

[Tentie]

I wanted to let Autodesk (and others) know what I have done to get around my issue, to see if they can fix the issue permanently. I saved my drawing back to 2010 file format and opened it in Civil 3D 2012. Now the 64 tabs print/publish in 30 minutes total. The same procedure in 2014 takes multiple hours. With everything extactly the same in both versions of Civil 3D, this proves to me that something was changed/broken in 2014 with respect to printing to a PDF using the built in DWG to PDF driver. I hope they can fix it and get the speed back, so I don't have to downgrade the DWG file format and use an older version to print the multiple tabs. Just saying... 🙂

[rl_jackson]

Here would be something to try, with C3D14

rename existing DWGtoPDF Printer in the Plotters folder for C3D14, Copy C3D12 DWGtoPDF Printer to the 14 folder and test.

Just a thought. To see if it's the Printer.

[vandenoosterkamp]

Any news?

Is autodesk going to fix this?

Are there any of them reading here anyway?

I need to batchplot a lot of pdf's also, plain autocad. Best solution is to grab an autocad2004/2007/2010 whatever CDRom, install the program and work on from threre :s