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asmath
asmath
Participant
November 22, 2019
Question

AutoCAD to Illustrator, PDF too large

  • November 22, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 3083 views

I have a drawing in AutoCAD that I saved as a PDF, added some changes in Illustrator, and then saved as a PDF. I clicked the option to compress to smallest file size and I made sure that the layer information was not saved, but my PDF became huge after saving it from Illustrator. (like 88,000 KB!) I have no idea why it's so large and would love any any advice in making the PDF smaller. Thanks.

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2 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
November 23, 2019

I agree with what @dmitkat already said. Also note that it may be more efficient to export groups and layers separately from ACAD and then re-assemble the drawing in AI. In addition you may want to check your line types and manually convert them before export to avoid them becoming endlessly subdivided poly lines or complex compound paths. Re-applying e.g. dashes is easy enough in AI as are many other things.

 

Mylenium

dmitkat
dmitkat
Participant
November 22, 2019

Better way is to save file in DWG 2004 and export it in AI.

Usually dramatic size change happens because of hatching. In DWG it is just a texture applied to a fill, but in PDF and AI it is a million of lines. Second reason - you have a transparent object or shadows. If you applied 300dpi to shadows and the artboard is 2 meters to 1 meter shadow will become too big image.

 

Yo can exam file with Acrobat DC in Print production.

 

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