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

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Message 1 of 35
Tentie
14499 Views, 34 Replies

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

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
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
34 REPLIES 34
Message 21 of 35
Tentie
in reply to: vandenoosterkamp

I have not heard anything from anyone about fixes. I know Autodesk employees do read in here and sometimes post information, but I don't know if they actually add these to their bug list to get them looked at and fixed. This is definately something they they have broken since 2012. The work around solution I am using is to save the drawing back to Civil 3D 2012 and then do my batch plot to PDF. For my large job, it takes less than 30 minutes to do 64 pages in 2012 where it takes 8-12 hours for exactly the same thing in 2014. It is a pain to do but it works and the extra time going back to 2012 is worth it for the time savings running it in 2014. Good Luck! Glen
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Message 22 of 35
lstarbird
in reply to: Tentie

+1 for this issue.  We've found that using a PC3 we create from Adobe Acrobat works soooo much faster.  But the downside is that regardless if we have layers merge turned on...it won't.  DWG to PDF will merge the layers nicely...but WOW...soooooo sllllooooooowwwwww!  Reminds me of the conversations I'd have with the old timers when they'd describe having to REGEN before leaving for the evening back in the day.  Oh technology.  Guess I'll give DWG to PDF in 2013 a whirl.

Message 23 of 35
martin.svensson
in reply to: Tentie

Tools menu -> Options -> Plot and publish-> Look for "Background processing options" -> Uncheck the box named "publish" -> Job done!

Try this. Worked for me. Saves me about 80-90% of the time.

Martin
Autocad 2014

Message 24 of 35
Tentie
in reply to: Tentie

Thank you for your input. My options there have always been turned off. (both Plotting and Publishing)

Cheers,

Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician I
Engineering Drafting Department
THE CORPORATION OF THE CITY OF NORTH BAY
> 200 McIntyre St. E., 6th Floor, P.O. Box 360
North Bay, ON Canada, P1B 8H8
* 705-474-0400 Ext. 2314
Toll free: 1-800-465-1882
" www.cityofnorthbay.ca
? glen.cameron@cityofnorthbay.ca
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Message 25 of 35

Thanks a lot Martin, this works for me as well.
Message 26 of 35
nonbeard13
in reply to: Tentie
Message 27 of 35
Tentie
in reply to: Tentie

Just a follow up on this topic. We are now running the current C3D 2016 SP#2 and the same issues still exist. They have not fixed anything that helps with the issue I brought forward. FYI, for those that are reading this now, the solution that I am now using is to Export the 2016 DWG file back to AutoCAD 2010 DWG file format. This is my current and always being updated drawing of the entire city showing all legal fabric, utilities, etc. I have maintained a copy of AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 and use it to open my base drawing, which x'refs in my exported DWG from 2016. Then I can print to PDF via the publish option, all 64 layout tabs. It works perfectly for me and only takes about 20 minutes to do all of the tabs. I just thought I would let people know that I have a work around solution that is perfect for what I need. I tried every other option presented by all of the contributors to this thread and found none of them to do what we needed. So this is my own work around that works. Yes you need to maintain 2 copies of AutoCAD Civil 3D but that is a small price to pay. I just hope that Autodesk eventually fixes what they broke, when they changed the publish options for PDF files.
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Message 28 of 35
JeffBgcw
in reply to: Tentie

Glen,

 

We ran into this issue a lot when we were using AutoCAD Civil 3d 2014 in our office. After a lot of conversations between our reseller and Autodesk, we ended up getting a DGN hotfix from Autodesk that, when installed, would purge DGN objects. Once we had installed this for our users and had them running it frequently on their drawings, the publishing times for anything (PDF, paper copies, etc.) improved. Maybe it will help you here.

 

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/downloads/caas/downloads/content/autocad-C2-AE-dgn-ho...

 

Message 29 of 35
Tentie
in reply to: JeffBgcw

Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are now running Civil 3D 2016 and, the problem still exists. All patches and hotfixes are already applied. I simply export back to 2012 DWG file format and open in Civil 3D 2012 and it publishes like the wind! Autodesk needs to see what they have changed and see why the change has caused this issue with our drawing. If they want a copy to play with then they are welcome to contact me directly and I would supply what I am using. cheers,
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Message 30 of 35
caddie99
in reply to: Tentie

All my plot to pdf troubles went away when I bought acroplot.
speedier, smaller file sizes, better quality on orthophotos
I suggest you try there trial version
https://www.cadzation.com/acroplotpro_info.htm
I used c3d2016 and windows 10 pro
Message 31 of 35
asko.oukka
in reply to: caddie99

I also had the very same problem (Slooooooooow - over 10..15 mins) PLOT:ing of DWG-images with Autodesk DWG TrueView 2016.

What did the trick for me was this;

 => Options (this takes you to the Plot Options Dialog)

 

 and in the "Options" -dialog, ensure the checkboxes for "Plotting" and "Publishing" under "Background processing options" are _NOT_ selected -> Apply - OK (see dialog below);

 

 step00.png

 

 

 

Message 32 of 35
Tentie
in reply to: caddie99

Unfortunately that did not work for me. I appreciate the input and ideas.
The only solution I have found is to save to an older version and plot from there. The 12 hour plot process drops to less than 30 minutes for 64 layout tabs.

Cheers,

Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician I
Engineering Drafting Department
THE CORPORATION OF THE CITY OF NORTH BAY
> 200 McIntyre St. E., 6th Floor, P.O. Box 360
North Bay, ON Canada, P1B 8H8
* 705-474-0400 Ext. 2314
Toll free: 1-800-465-1882
" www.cityofnorthbay.ca
þ glen.cameron@cityofnorthbay.ca
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Message 33 of 35
tcorey
in reply to: Tentie

It's cool that you're continuing to post to this thread. Thanks for that.

 

You say you can Plot a sheet pretty quickly? Have you thought of creating a LISP routine to plot the sheets for you?

 

By the way, you never did say whether you tried it with lower resolution in the PDF output, as suggested by a couple of others who posted to the thread.

 

Could it be Civil 3D objects are causing the issue? Do you have a lot of dynamic profiles, or one really long one, in the drawing? One thing I would try is exporttoautocad2010, and then try publishing that file with 2016. If the 2010 file prints quickly in 2016, that would tell me Civil 3D objects are causing this. Now you start looking at specfic objects. Surface too large? Lots of complex feature lines? Lots of gradings?

 

I am curious to hear how this comes out, even if it's another three years. 😉

 

To,

 



Tim Corey
MicroCAD Training and Consulting, Inc.
Redding, CA
Autodesk Gold Reseller

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. -- Kurt Vonnegut
Message 34 of 35
Tentie
in reply to: Tentie

Sorry - I have tried every option/item that has been suggested so far with no luck. My drawing is a simple AutoCAD drawing with the only Civil 3D object being the Pay Items being assigned to linework, symbols, etc. (no alignments, surfaces, grading, etc.) The drawing is about 13Mb in size and contains all of our city legal fabric, water and sewer lines/structures with lots of text denoting pipe sizes, legal plan numbers, etc. (all as simple lines/polylines, blocks, mtext, etc.) This main drawing is then x'reffed into another drawing which has the 64 layout tabs each representing a separate page. Each page is basically a portion of the main drawing done in a grid like layout. It is from this second drawing that I need to regularly plot out the tabs to generate a booklet for our field crews so they can have the most current information available for their work.

As I think I said before, the older version of Civil 3D (2012) works perfectly but the current version (2016, which was first found in 2014) with the exact same settings, and all the variations mentioned, and others that I have tried as well, does not plot in a timely fashion. If I save it back to 2012 and do the exact same plot, it works perfectly.

Cheers,

Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician I
Engineering Drafting Department
THE CORPORATION OF THE CITY OF NORTH BAY
> 200 McIntyre St. E., 6th Floor, P.O. Box 360
North Bay, ON Canada, P1B 8H8
* 705-474-0400 Ext. 2314
Toll free: 1-800-465-1882
" www.cityofnorthbay.ca
þ glen.cameron@cityofnorthbay.ca
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.
Glen W. Cameron, C.E.T.
Engineering Technician 1
City of North Bay
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
Message 35 of 35
evans.1930
in reply to: Tentie

If you go to the layout tab and right click on it and select 'page setup manager' then click modify for the highlighted tab that you are currently in, a new pop up will come onto the screen. The name of the printer/plotter should be 'none' and all of the sheets within the SSM should have the same printer/plotter name. When selecting to publish them all at once from the SSm, right click on the name of the ssm, hover over 'publish' then select 'publish dialog box' you have a printing page set up of all the potential pages that you are about to print. If you go to 'publish to:' drop down menu and select "plotter names in page setup' and then select all of the pages and change the page setup from '<default: none>' to 11x17 or whatever size you want then it should work. I think it lags when not all of the pages have the same plotter names in page setup manager. I changed all of mine to 'none' and then published and it worked in like 1 min. Maybe it could still work if all of the layouts have different printer/plotter names if you select PDF in the "publish to:' drop down menu. I think that either of these ways will significantly cut down publishing to a pdf time.  

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