Who can tell me why PDF files exported from CAD / revit are slow

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
September 6, 2024
1 reply
3125 views

In Illustrator, I work with PDFs that were exported from CAD/Revit architectural programs and they are painfully slow. Is there a way to connect with someone with Adobe or a third party who can examine a sample file and tell me WHY these are so bad?

I've tried all my tricks and researched, but I don't know what else to try. If someone could specifically say what's going on, I could try to fix it in my files. Or I could tell the architects what to do differently.

Performance

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Can you open Window > Document info and tell us how many paths and anchor points are in the files?

What are your hardware specifications?

T

travisb10426269Author

Inspiring

Here's a sample file's info. I'm using a Mac Studio (M2 Max) with 64 BG of RAM.

And what's the biggest impact in file performance- is number of paths worse than number of masks? Open paths worse than closed paths?

T

travisb10426269Author

Inspiring

So there are 2 million points. Probably that number could be smaller when paths get joined.

As for the number of masks: probably both are equally bad. What do you need to edit in Illustrator?

We use plans as a base layer for wayfinding documentation. I know the files are complex - CAD makes everything worse by making fills as masks and strokes as separate objects. But this Studio machine is just as slow as the 5-year-old iMac it replaced, so it seems like Illustrator is the problem. Affinity Designer is 10x faster, but doesn't work with the rest of our workflow.

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