zowie123 Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 Hi All, Sometimes I get a major slowdown on a layout page when I add a pdf to a plan then send the plan to layout. It can happen when I drag a pdf survey into a plan, expand it 1to1 on a layer under my plan then send to layout. Everything is fast in plan view, but that layout page takes seconds to respond to each command. While monitoring the system the other day, I found the CPU is mainly using one core when a movement is made on that layout page. All cores are being used for everything else. Just thought I'd post this for someone at Chief to check out, don't know if that has anything to do with it, but it makes sense because no amount CPU or GPU increase has ever really affected this lag time. CPU Ryzen 7 2700 16 megs ddr4 3400 GPU 2080 EVGA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parkwest Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 Have you tried converting your PDF to a jpeg before dragging it onto your layout? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 David has the right idea but I get better results with .png formatting. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zowie123 Posted February 10, 2019 Author Share Posted February 10, 2019 Hi David. No, but I will next time. Is there more or less image loss when expanding it 1 to 1? Thanks, Barry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 2 minutes ago, zowie123 said: Is there more or less image loss when expanding it 1 to 1? With .png I have experienced increased resolution and performance but it will depend on the original pdf quality. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 48 minutes ago, zowie123 said: Just thought I'd post this for someone at Chief to check out, This is not the appropriate channel for that. You should send things like this directly to tech support if you really want Chief to look into it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 34 minutes ago, Alaskan_Son said: You should send things like this directly to tech support if you really want Chief to look into it. Yes I would agree and have done so myself but it seems to take a stack of reports to get things fixed unfortunately. I have been using the workaround for a while now and it would be great to not require a conversion and storage of an extra file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrownTiger Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 Many many years ago PDF was a simple format based on PostScript. Everything was a text file 1 0 Obj << /Type /Font ... >> These days are OVER. Modern PDFs have multiple compressed streams of prior defined objects, /ProcSet <- procedure sets, functions, embedded interactive objects, embedded fonts, patterns, etc etc etc. It is NOT possible IMHO to parse process them cost effectively in a multiple threads/processes at the same time. Why am I not all that surprised that only one core is in USE.... Use images. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dermot Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 As pointed out, if you need to report a problem to us, you need to do it through tech support, not through the forums. As far as pdf's are concerned, we use a third party library for these. We have zero control over how this third party library works. If they can't or won't implement a multi-core solution or some other technology to speed up their library we can't solve the problem for them. We certainly do not have the resources to write our own pdf library. The best we can do is see if we can find a better library but that could have a different set of problems (including licensing issues). My recommendation is that you don't use pdf's for importing images. Embedding an image in a pdf, rather than using the image directly in Chief, is more likely to cause you performance problems. If you are using pdf's, you should prefer using them with vector based graphics and text. These will be much more compact, much better at scaling, and should not suffer the same performance issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 16 minutes ago, Dermot said: If you are using pdf's, you should only use them with vector based graphics and text. These will be much more compact, much better at scaling, and should not suffer the same performance issues. Unfortunately a lot of the pdf documents that we are faced with using are scanned or flattened and present the same issues as a pdf image. There is often not a choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dermot Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 I modified my post to suggest that you should "prefer" using them with vector based graphics. If someone has a DWG file available, you should get that instead of a pdf. If they are making you a pdf, you should see if they can make it without images. If you don't have a choice, then you have to use what you have. There is a general misconception that pdfs are the best format for sending information to other people and this is not always true. Another thing to consider is when you have a multi-page pdf. You can only display a single page at a time but we still have to load and process the whole pdf. You would be much better off if you could get the pdf with only the information you want in a single page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 27 minutes ago, Dermot said: Another thing to consider is when you have a multi-page pdf. You can only display a single page at a time but we still have to load and process the whole pdf. You would be much better off if you could get the pdf with only the information you want in a single page. Very interesting. I don't have much experience with this but tried it yesterday and 17 pages all came in individually and displayed all at once on the plan view screen. Was then able to delete pages individually that were not required. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 Have you tried Using your PDF Reader to make "Snapshots" of the required Info or page and then pasting them into Chief instead ?, seems to work fairly well for me when needed in Plan or Layout , as I too have found importing a PDF directly makes things slow way down. Also Most PDF Readers will allow you to Print only one page , so I simply print that page to a PDF Printer ( eg Bullzip) if I need a single Page from a Larger Document. M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dermot Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 Quote I don't have much experience with this but tried it yesterday and 17 pages all came in individually and displayed all at once on the plan view screen. Was then able to delete pages individually the were not required. All 17 pages will come in as separate pdf boxes but each box also contains all 17 pages of data. After deleting pages 2-17, open up the pdf box for page 1 that you have left. Note that under "Page" that it still says 1 / 17 and that you can change it to any page you want. This means that the pdf box still has all of the data for all 17 pages stored in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopsaw Posted February 11, 2019 Share Posted February 11, 2019 2 minutes ago, Dermot said: All 17 pages will come in as separate pdf boxes but each box also contains all 17 pages of data. After deleting pages 2-17, open up the pdf box for page 1 that you have left. Note that under "Page" that it still says 1 / 17 and that you can change it to any page you want. This means that the pdf box still has all of the data for all 17 pages stored in it. Thanks Dermot, That would definitely explain the slowness. Will go with Mick's suggestion above when necessary in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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