dshall Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 So, I am now on a mac. A pdf file on a mac is about 80 megs, same file on pc about 4 megs, file 20 time larger, hard to email. So I have to quit CA on MAC and deactivate license, open PC and activate CA license on PC and then print a PDF. What the EF are you guys doing? Do you guys print a PDF on a MAC? And then what do you do? Isn't your PDF too large to email. How do you send this file to anybody? My first computer was a MAC SE30 back in 1989, 80 meg of hard drive space, which was big back then, I could not even save my current mac pdf's on that machine. I wish someone would fix this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 I can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted May 23, 2014 Author Share Posted May 23, 2014 I can't believe this hasn't been fixed yet. It is surprising. I do not think it is CA's fault. I think it is Apple's responsibility or maybe some super smart guy who can write a program that will create pdf's for the mac that are not too large. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLDrafting Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 There are (2) types of Pdf images. Raster and vector. The raster images blow up and become huge. Same thing in ACAD. There is a conversion program for Pdf to Dwg. I have not found a method to reduce the size of the raster files. I have no idea about the MAC issue, but I haven't seen anybody differentiate between the two Pdf formats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted May 23, 2014 Author Share Posted May 23, 2014 There are (2) types of Pdf images. Raster and vector. The raster images blow up and become huge. Same thing in ACAD. There is a conversion program for Pdf to Dwg. I have not found a method to reduce the size of the raster files. I have no idea about the MAC issue, but I haven't seen anybody differentiate between the two Pdf formats. Just to be clear, I am assuming there is nothing you are telling me that will alleviate the issue I am having. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLDrafting Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 That is correct. ACAD has been able to import Pdf's for quite awhile. I noticed that when inserted into a drawing, it was as if my computer went into slow motion. I contacted tech support and was told there was not a solution. I found this article that helped with understanding, but may not help in many cases. I have worked in CAD with drawings converted to Dwg, but a simple line became lots of pieces of lines which could then be made into a single entity and assigned a layer. http://www.rastertovector.com/r2v-articles/converting-pdf-files-to-cad.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted May 23, 2014 Author Share Posted May 23, 2014 Thanks Jim, it really is frustrating having to switch over to the PC to print a flipping PDF. Called sales hoping they would sympathize with my dilemma, and their suggestion was to buy a second license. Very hard to justify that expense. Maybe CA can come up with a dummied down version for the express use for some of us MAC users to do a quick print to pdf on the PC without having to deactivate and activate and then deactivate to reactivate, do a couple of pirouettes, a back flip and then recite the alphabet backwards just to get a silly pdf. Just this morning, a time crunch, editing a plan on mac, needing to then print on pc, wait up to 5 minutes for the drop boxes to sync so I can then open file on pc to print so I can then go back to back all the time having to do the deactivate, activate, deactivate, reactive dance. I was dealing with BETA a couple of months ago, I got so fed up with going through this dance, I asked for a separate license so both computers were readily accessible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Some details about the issue. We use Qt as our cross platform toolkit. The issue is in the code they supply. We are working with them to resolve the issue, but it isn't a trivial fix. I don't have an estimate as to when they will have this fixed. The issue has to do with fonts. Normally a PDF is created by embedding the font into the PDF and then just outputting the text. But in the case of Qt on the Mac they have not finished implementing the font embedding. So instead they draw each glyph as if it were a filled polygon. This quickly creates bloating, but does result in good high resolution vector graphics so the print out is crisp. The more text you have in a layout the greater the bloat. If you have no text on your layout the size on Windows and Mac is identical. But that is not a typical case. I wish I had a better answer. Our point of view on this is that it is important to fix, but the current solution does produce PDFs that print well. Which is better than not having PDFs. Interestingly, we have a completely opposite problem with importing PDFs. On the Mac they import and draw well and quickly. But the toolkit we are using on Windows has issues with some PDFs, especially those with embedded pixel based images. Getting everything to work the same on both platforms is never going to happen. But we will continue to strive to improve things wherever we can. I'm actually surprised that we managed to get as many features on the Mac as we did. Going into this project the idea that some features might not be available on the Mac was an acceptable although not ideal option. Differences in how well features work are fairly common. This is one example. We will continue to push to improve the result. We appreciate your patience on this. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted May 23, 2014 Author Share Posted May 23, 2014 Thanks Doug, from now on I will not put any text in my plans, it will save me loads of time and my clients a lot of money. Thanks for staying on top of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe_Carrick Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Doug, I'm curious about this - just about the only Text I have in my Layout is the Title Block and Layout Box Labels. I do all other annotation in the Plan and Camera Views before sending them to Layout. Does your statement about Text in Layout mean that the Text in the Plan and Camera Views is OK? Of course since I'm totally PC based and use a secondary PDF Printer vs Chief's "Save as PDF" - I'm evidently immune to this problem anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Sorry to be unclear. It is the text that is sent to the printer than counts regardless of the source. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe_Carrick Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Sorry to be unclear. It is the text that is sent to the printer than counts regardless of the source. OK, thanks - I'm glad I didn't get the MAC BUG !!!!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 OK, thanks - I'm glad I didn't get the MAC BUG !!!!!!! Me too, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electromen Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 Now we know. Scott, should we start a discussion about the best way to send or download large files? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 Now we know. Scott, should we start a discussion about the best way to send or download large files? We could, I was wondering how others were handling the situation. I think I explained how I was dealing with it, how are you dealing with the issue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electromen Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 If it's too large for email, I set it up as an automatic download from my web site. The file is password protected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steely Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 While sitting on the fence pondering whether to fall off onto the Chief side or stay on the Vectorworks side, issues such as this PDF printing issue make me ponder more deeply. I intended on working with my Macbook Pro in the interim if I make the switch over to Chief. If I was to output a typical single sheet, dimensioned floor plan, D-size, as a PDF file for printing at either 300 or 600 dpi, what is the realistic file size I can expect? When Scott speaks of 80 megs are we speaking of the size of the complete file including all sheets and layouts... or? Thanks in advance, very much enjoy the banter and great help on this forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted May 24, 2014 Author Share Posted May 24, 2014 80 meg for about 16 sheets, 3 sheets at maybe 12, 1 sheet about 3 Meg's, depends on what us on sheet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steely Posted May 24, 2014 Share Posted May 24, 2014 Thanks Scott! Still seems a bit high. Typically a Mac PDF out of Vectorworks is more like 800-1000k for a pretty dense sheet. ... and what the heck are you and I doing on a Saturday afternoon screwing around with this sort of thing... I should be outside fixing the BBQ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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