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Inspiring
September 6, 2024
Question

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

  • September 6, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 3123 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.

1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 6, 2024

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

 

What are your hardware specifications?

Inspiring
September 6, 2024

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?

Inspiring
September 6, 2024

These files open so much faster in Affinity Designer, so it seems like Illustrator should be able to handle them.