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    PDF Print/Export is crazy slow!

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved LayOut Discussions
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    • S Offline
      sonder
      last edited by

      What's your output quality set to under file/document setup - rendering quality? Every pdf I've posted was exported on pdf set to low and rendering quality set to high. Most of my 5 page documents take 30 seconds or so to generate.

      I'm not sure why you guys are having these issues.

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      • C Offline
        Charlie__V
        last edited by

        @unknownuser said:

        What's your output quality set to under file/document setup - rendering quality?

        I am certain I have tried every combination possible.
        Currently I have my edit quality & output set to Medium.

        I then typically export to low quality for intial Email/Drop Box correspondence.

        Once the design is near complete I up the export .pdf to medium and then export to high for the final.
        I typically have to break apart the final to smaller chunks if anyone hopes to open them on their mobile devices.
        Otherwise the final HQ .pdf file in DB remains intact for the print shop.

        My last two files:
        15 sheets @ 11"x17" ~ 47MB
        40 sheets @ 11"x17" ~ 69MB

        These last 2 projects are exterior elevations/aerials with site.(for ARC Review)
        Yes, they have trees and some other goodies that crank things up some....but the buildings are essentially shells for now.(I suspect similar to what TT is doing).

        Charlie

        Precision M1710/Win 7 Pro 64 bit/i-7 6920 Quad core 2.9 Ghz -3.8/16Gb ram/NVIDIA M5000M 8Gb

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        • pbacotP Offline
          pbacot
          last edited by

          I found little (none for raster) difference in quality once you choose Low for Pdf export (whether you choose Document setup high resolution output or low). Mac print to PDF is the same quality, time, and file size (in my tests) as export PDF high quality.

          Too many settings in different places, and why not have pages all render the same? etc etc. The reason is that LayOut is so slow at rendering. My CAD is always the same, even with colors (images do affect it) all crisp, fast, output to reasonably sized pdfs ( no dumbed down resolution or quality offered),

          I don't know what the deal is with pdf file sizes. Different programs produce different sizes and doesn't seem to be related to quality, vector or not. Some other pdfs are so slow to view as to be useless. I am talking in general here. There must be some ways to optimize pdf output and I hope LO gets some better results in the future.

          So I guess I have the "problem" that HIGH / HIGH raster is as low I would want to go in quality--might be OK for some printed output. So the times and pdf sizes go up from there. Certainly in some cases the jaggies get lost in printing and your nose has to be "on the page" to see it all but it does affect the overall quality and is terrible for pdf viewing on the computer.

          MacOSX MojaveSketchUp Pro v19 Twilight v2 Thea v3 PowerCADD

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          • thomthomT Offline
            thomthom
            last edited by

            If only there was a setting that would output Hybrid to print, and simple raster for screen. That would help me.

            It's worth noting that I got a rather big model. A very large site plan with stepped terrain. I've used Layout before and not had too much problem with performance. But when I compare to how SketchUp handle the model it appear that Layout is lagging far behind.

            Just wanted to check if I'd missed some "tricks".

            Observation I made, I opened a High resolution PDF from Layout in Adobe Acrobat, right clicked one of the image tiles on one of the pages and it offers me to save it to disk. However, the recommended fileformat was BMP! ... is that an indication that the PDF from Layout saved the images as BMP? Or is it just a weird default in Adobe Acrobat?

            Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
            List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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            • C Offline
              Charlie__V
              last edited by

              Perhaps a shared benchmark file is in order?
              (For .pdf export time/file size...I know...I know...but perhaps it is simply not hardware related).

              & fwiw, the 2 projects I mention are ~ .25 acre and probably ~6+ acre respectively.
              Unfortunately I cannot share the actual project files...maybe a vanilla/pseudo variant?

              Thoughts?

              Charlie

              Precision M1710/Win 7 Pro 64 bit/i-7 6920 Quad core 2.9 Ghz -3.8/16Gb ram/NVIDIA M5000M 8Gb

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              • S Offline
                sonder
                last edited by

                Well, if you want to see crazy PDF file size, I have one set of CDs for a 4000 sf house that is 415 mb. I exported on high quality. What I found is that exported to low quality printed on 24x36 inch paper reads really well, so that is why I export on low quality now. In fact the difference between high and low when printed is minimal at best.

                If the file size is a problem, there are PDF exporters that work well. For me, the ease of export out of layout is great. If you are vector rendering an entire model, that is where you will pay in time. Mine are all raster with isolated line work vector rendered, so I never see exports take longer than 30 seconds for the larger files.

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                • S Offline
                  sonder
                  last edited by

                  @unknownuser said:

                  Perhaps a shared benchmark file is in order?
                  (For .pdf export time/file size...I know...I know...but perhaps it is simply not hardware related).

                  & fwiw, the 2 projects I mention are ~ .25 acre and probably ~6+ acre respectively.
                  Unfortunately I cannot share the actual project files...maybe a vanilla/pseudo variant?

                  Thoughts?

                  Charlie

                  I'm getting a new machine in two weeks, but my current setup is:

                  I7 2600k
                  Nvidia gtx 550ti
                  16gb ram
                  (1) 47" led

                  New machine:

                  I7 3930 super clocked to 4.2-4.6
                  Nvidia gtx 680
                  64gb ram
                  (3) 47" led......he he he.

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                  • P Offline
                    Penguin2
                    last edited by

                    Hi,

                    Not a technical answer but I found that certain styles I was using in Sketchup quadrupled the PDF file size in Layout.

                    Penguin2

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                    • thomthomT Offline
                      thomthom
                      last edited by

                      I use a pretty standard template based on the Architectural style.

                      Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                      List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                      • V Offline
                        victorcn
                        last edited by

                        right click on layout process in windows task manager, set priority to high. It'll speed up a little bit

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                        • RichardR Offline
                          Richard
                          last edited by

                          Have you tried optimising the PDF's after export - this I've found can reduce the file size of lots of CAD generated files.

                          Advanced > PDF optimiser!

                          [BUILTBRAND.COM.AU](http://builtbrand.com.au/)

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                          • thomthomT Offline
                            thomthom
                            last edited by

                            @richard said:

                            Have you tried optimising the PDF's after export

                            Yea, very mixed results. The ones that actually bring the size down makes everything look really bad.
                            While in comparison, if I set up the same pages in InDesign I get much smaller files, no problem.

                            Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                            List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                            • Rich O BrienR Online
                              Rich O Brien Moderator
                              last edited by

                              Look at the meta of an InDesign export and a LayOut.

                              Download the free D'oh Book for SketchUp πŸ“–

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                              • KrisidiousK Offline
                                Krisidious
                                last edited by

                                I've learned to use my PDF995 to print PDFs out of Layout. It's much faster and the file sizes are 1000 times smaller with all the detail. It's a pdf printer port emulator.

                                By: Kristoff Rand
                                Home DesignerUnique House Plans

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                                • RichardR Offline
                                  Richard
                                  last edited by

                                  @krisidious said:

                                  I've learned to use my PDF995 to print PDFs out of Layout. It's much faster and the file sizes are 1000 times smaller with all the detail. It's a pdf printer port emulator.

                                  Clever

                                  [BUILTBRAND.COM.AU](http://builtbrand.com.au/)

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