Export drawing to pdf with raster views

[erling_thingelstad]

We have drawings of large models that we want to convert to lightweight pdfs. One option we thought of was if we could get the drawing views exported as raster graphics instead of vector. Turning on "Make View Raster" for a drawing view just makes a mess when printed, so that is not an option. Are there other options to get lightweight pdfs from complex drawings?

[Cadmanto]

Not exactly sure what you mean by "light weight PDF" ???

PDF's in general are not large files.  Why can't you just print to PDF?

Windows 10 x64 -16GB Ram
Intel i7-6700 @ 3.41ghz
nVidia GTS 250 - 1 GB
Inventor Pro 2020

[Jon.Dean · Accepted solution]

Hi @erling_thingelstad,

There is no option for the type of Raster view you get in your Inventor drawings.

Have you compared the size of IDW against DWG?

Is there any file size difference?

The other option is to create DWF's instead.

Have you considered this? 

Cheers

Jon.

[Anonymous]

PDF is already optimized for vectors. When raster images are encountered you can - depending on the translating software - choose the DPI-settings for the translated data (actually downscaling). But remember that most of the time the number of bits needed to describe point-line-point is less than the coordinates of x# dots to form the line in raster.

Get rid of shaded views, if any. A quick test revealed that turning views in line mode reduced a file from 1532 kB to 209 kB. This was with 'Microsoft Print to PDF'.

I'm pretty sure that this (the PDF engine) also has something to do with it. At home I made some PDF's that were equally simple as the test mentioned above and these were only 7 kB. At home I use CutePDF. Similar things happen with DXF. If it's only about lines and curves then a minimal DXF-fileheader with a complete 'ENTITIES' section can save you 95% of waste, compared to an out-of-the-box DXF.

[erling_thingelstad]

Thank you all for chiming in. For normal drawings, you are right. I wasn't clear about this, but file size is not my issue, it's processing complexity when compiling drawing sets into books. My test drawing is one sheet and has 493358 DrawingCurve objects in 8 non-shaded drawing views plus some insignificant amount in frame and title block. Pdf file size is 3,2 MB (only 6,9 bytes per object!). I believe it's much easier for other software to handle 8 bitmaps than 500 000 vector objects. The conversion can be done afterwards with other tools, but I was looking for a way to make a pdf with raster drawing views right from the start. I suspected this was not possible, and now I know. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information on the goal of the exercise. What you want can be done but I'm afraid it falls outside the scope of normal printing to PDF. You would need a PDF to raster converter to turn the vector drawing into raster image. And then re-assemble these images in a new PDF. A search on "convert pdf line to raster" will offer plenty of choice.

A screenshot of the PDF will only work on a high definition monitor/video card. Calculating from 300DPI being a minimum for decent graphics you end up with an image that should have 3000 pixels minimum along its longest edge. That's Ultra HD.

[freesbee]

...nevertheless there are a few ideas asking for PDF translator improvements, and one of them would address exactly your issue ("improve control on PDF export" by Ambrose). Altogether they are already towards 200 votes... maybe with some additional votes some action by Autodesk could be triggered. Check them out: they are documented here!