Best way to delete everything outside of a circle in a large editable PDF?

[Skazma Jerry]

I have bunch a large editable PDFs with which I am only trying to use a small portion of. They are vector topographical maps with millions of anchor points, and is therefore slowing down my computer immensely.

What would be the easiest way to put a circle around a certain portion of the map, and delete everything outside of that circle? I haven't been having much luck with the pathfinder panel or eraser tool.

[manal shanableh]

if clipping mask doesnt work with you, you can try a trick i used to do, select with direct selection tool the anchor points or an area you need, lock selection with  CMD/CTRL 2 , select all and delect the rest objects that are not locked.

[Skazma Jerry]

I'm not sure how well the clipping mask will work for this application, as Illustrator and RDWorks aren't the best at communicating with each other. I'm will ultimately be using a laser cutter to engrave some wood, and I don't think RDWorks can handle a clipping mask properly.

[manal shanableh]

in which application you want to do this task???! i thought in adobe illustrator!

you can open the pdf on illustrator and edite.. either clipping mask or delete unwanted anchors as i mentioned.

[Skazma Jerry]

Example 1 - Area I want to crop

Example 2 - Outline mode with tons of anchor points

[Mario Arizmendi]

You can use a script for this task, see here

https://alexbruni.ru/youtube2images/video.php?v=liui0ZUAN50

[Skazma Jerry]

This is awesome! I've always wondered about something like this. I will give it a shot and see what happens.

[Skazma Jerry]

Well, I tried that plugin but it froze my computer multiple times. I think the file is just way too big and complex for this to work. That said, I have definitely saved the plugin for future use! Thanks again.

[Kurt Gold]

Jerry,

this is a frequently requested task. Unfortunately, there is no panacea to get the desired results. Depends on what kind of objects the file actually contains and what attributes should definitely be preserved when doing the crop operations.

Can you share a sample Illustrator file, as per your first screenshot?

[Skazma Jerry]

Of course, here you go! The file was too big to upload, so here is a Dropbox link instead:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2zqdl81s4n7r2y9/CO_Pikes_Peak_20191004_TM_geo.pdf?dl=0

I'm trying to preserve the stroke lines of everything as they make up the majority of the map.

[Kurt Gold]

Thanks for the sample file, Jerry.

Currently, I don't think that any kind of script can process this file reasonably (while retaining all object attributes).

Can you perhaps provide the same sample file again, but this time marking the exact area that has to be cropped.

[Skazma Jerry]

You bet! I will get that uploaded after lunch in about an hour and a half.

[Creamer Training]

I was able to simply the art somewhat.

This is my end product:

Here is an Outline view of the edited file vs the original (I tried to keep them at relative sizes):

I brought the PDF into InDesign and printed it to the Adobe PDF driver. Not the best workflow, but it worked. Basically, anything that was showing up inside the crop area stayed intact. I tried cropping it and removing hidden data in Acrobat but the image rasterized (an old bug).

[Kurt Gold]

Jerry, I hope the lunch was delicious.

How about the file you were going to provide?

[Creamer Training]

I think he did. It was focused around pikes peak.