Bluebeam Print to PDF has massively increased in size

[javirod800]

Hello everyone,

I recently created a PDF set with Bluebeam that has somehow ballooned to 300 MB when, 1 month prior, I had exported the same set and it was around 100 MB. What's strange is that I have not made any significant changes to the model that could warrant such a change. I have also not made any changes to the print settings. I even extracted the pages from both sets so I could compare the file sizes page by page, and every single page in the set has increased in size no matter what kind of elements it contains or even if it has received any changes. 

I have unfortunately been unable to isolate the cause. 

Thanks for the help.

[joshua_curvey · Accepted solution]

@javirod800 

What version of Revit are you using? Revit's native PDF exporter (since R22) works well and does not seem to bloat the PDF size. We do use Bluebeam, but not for PDF printing. Also with Revit's PDF export tool, the detail tags still retain their link to the sheet in Bluebeam.

[RSomppi · Accepted solution]

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@javirod800 wrote:

What's strange is that I have not made any significant changes to the model that could warrant such a change.

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What seems insignificant to you could change the result significantly. Could it be the previous set was able to be plotted with vector graphics and the change(s) have made Revit switch to raster printing?

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

Most likely something triggered raster printing.  Extract one PDF page which is increase in MB and share it here.  Last but not least, using Revit's Export to PDF or DiRoots One Prosheet PDF export are way better than printing to PDF.

[javirod800]

@joshua_curvey I'm using Revit 2021. 

@RSomppi Thanks for the tip. I double checked my settings and the latest set was definitely printed with vector graphics. I tested exporting a single page and it's unfortunately still bloated. Even the cover sheet, which contains little more than the index, has increased in file size by 5x. 

[javirod800]

Thank you all for the suggestions. I agree that the likely cause was a shift to raster printing. The sheets where we had imported PDFs for reference were definitely the most problematic ones. In any case, we very recently upgraded our model to Revit 2024 and using Revit's native PDF exporter did wonders for the file size. I'm sure that compressing the PDFs in Bluebeam and re-importing them with a lower DPI would do even more. This is the solution I'll take for now.