Reduce File Size Autocad

19.12.2020admin

Revu provides a mechanism for reducing the size of some PDFs to make them more palatable for email or a Document Management System. This tool works by compressing bitmap images and removing non-visible document data. It does not affect vector content. Be aware that performing this action on a page containing flattened markups will prevent all markups on the page from being unflattened.

You can't reduce autocad's files without destroying it altogether. Do you mean to reduce file sizes of dwgs? Take a note of the file size before and after purging the file. If the size is still not up to your expectation even after purging it, try doing a write block (WBlock) command to specifically grab the drawing you need out from the file without bringing in other worthless elements that weighted down your CAD file. Note: If you created a backup copy of your file, compare the file size now. You should notice that it is substantially reduced. AutoCAD’s ‘AUDIT’ command inspects the drawing file’s database for errors. Type ‘AUDIT’ at the command line, Type ‘Y’ to fix errors and then hit the F2 key to see what AutoCAD has done to your file. It's very good for real-time measurement, the use of this software is very professional.

The Reduce File Size feature for single PDFs is discussed here. There is also a Batch version of Reduce File Size.

To reduce the size of a single PDF:

Open the PDF to be reduced.
Go to Document > Process > Reduce File Size. The Reduce File Size dialog box appears.
Revu comes preloaded with several convenient Presets, pre-configured settings designed to balance document Quality with the amount of Compression. Use one of these presets or use customized reduction settings to determine how the PDF will be compressed.
To use a preset reduction setting:
1. Select Presets.
2. Move the slider bar to the desired setting. The leftmost setting has the highest image quality with the lowest amount of compression while the rightmost setting applies the highest amount of compression resulting in the greatest size reduction, though possibly at the expense of image quality.
3. Proceed to step 4 below.
To use custom reduction settings:
1. Select Custom.
2. Select a previously saved custom configuration set from the Edit Preset menu and click OK, then proceed to step 4 below.
  - or -
  Click Edit. The Reduce File Size Custom Settings dialog box appears.
  Reduction settings are divided among three tabs at the top of the dialog box. Before beginning, however, consult the color-coded bar chart at the bottom of the dialog box. It shows a breakdown of the PDF’s file size and can indicate where the most dramatic file reductions can be realized. This is also where the values for the original File Size, the Estimated reduced file size and the percentage by which the document will be reduced are shown. These values update as settings are changed; use them to determine whether the selected configuration meets the file reduction needs.
  Images
  Images are broken into four categories according to bit depth (Full Color, 8-bit Color, Grayscale and Monochrome) and the number of images in a given category is shown below each heading as the Count. Settings are applied to all images in the category.
  - Convert to: Select the image type to convert images to. The effects of this selection vary greatly according to the original image type, but for color images, generally PNGThe PNG format is a lossless compressed format. The benefits to using this format are that the full quality of the image will be retained, yet the amount of information describing the image will be reduced, generally resulting in a smaller file size. renders images of higher fidelity while JPEGJPEG is a lossy compressed graphics format that drops certain graphic information entirely in the save process. When an image is stored in this format, it will not retain all of the fidelity of the original source image, but it will produce a significantly smaller file than PNG. and JPEG2000JPEG2000 is an update to the JPEG format. Compression is based on wavelet technology and creates compressed images that generally look better than a JPEG file; the compression mechanism is more complex, however, and therefore requires more computing power to display. result in smaller image sizes. For monochrome images, CCITT generally renders the higher fidelity and JBIG2 results in the smaller image sizes.
  - Max DPI: Select the maximum number of Dots Per Inch (or “resolution”) to convert images to. The number of images that would be reduced by the selection is shown below the selection. If this value is 0, all of the images in this category are already at a lower DPI than what is selected.
  - Bit Depth: Select the color depthNumber of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel/dot. of converted images.
  - Quality: Select the image quality (high, medium or low) for JPEG or JPEG2000 images.
  In addition, enable or disable any of the following global image settings:
  - Automatically reduce bit depth of compatible images: Enable to cause all images selected for conversion (above) to be analyzed to determine whether they can be converted to a smaller bit depth without introducing errors (for example, some images saved as 'full color' would do just as well saved at '8-bit color' with a considerably smaller file size) and, if so, convert those images to the smaller bit depth type.
  - Remove ICC Color Profiles: Enable to remove any embedded ICC color profilesInternational Color Consortium (ICC) color profiles define color spaces, data that characterizes a color input or output device, according to standards maintained by the ICC., which are generally only needed when printing PDFs, and replace them with their defined, alternate color spaces.
  - Combine identical indexed colorspaces: Enable to cause all images that use identical color spaces to reference a single instance of the color space in the PDF and remove the duplicates.
  Fonts
  - Drop Embedded: Enable to remove any embedded fonts from the PDF. Note that this might affect the display of the PDF on other computers; if a font used in the PDF is not present on another computer, a substitute font will be used to render the PDF.
  Miscellaneous
  Enable any of the following options, as desired. The general effects of selecting an option (for example, the number of bytes that would be removed from the file or the number of images that would be affected) is shown immediately to its right; if nothing is shown, that type of data is not present and enabling the option would have no effect.
  - Drop Metadata: Enable to remove all metadata associated with the PDF or with objects within the PDF.
  - Drop Private Data: Enable to remove document private data, which is generally only usable by whatever application created the PDF.
  - Compress All Streams: Enable to compress any uncompressed content streamsContent streams are the primary means for describing the appearance of pages and other graphical elements in a PDF. in the PDF.
  - Drop Thumbnails: Enable to remove embedded thumbnails, generally used for quick previews of content by some applications, from the document.
  - Drop Unused Resources: Enable to remove any resources, such as images, fonts, color spaces, or snapshots of content from other pages, that are not used when rendering page content (this often happens when PDFs are extracted from larger documents).
  - Drop Free XRefs: Enable to recycle any XRefsXRefs are reference numbers for objects within a PDF. that no longer refer to anything in the document.
  - Crop content to crop box: Enable to remove any image data that falls outside of a PDF's crop box (often when an image is 'cropped' within a PDF, the parts of the image that fall outside the crop box are simply hidden; this option deletes the hidden content).
  - Dereference number XRefs: Enable to replace XRefsXRefs are reference numbers for objects within a PDF. that reference a number (some PDFs, for example, use XRefs to define image width) with the actual number (which takes up less space).
3. To save this configuration for use in future documents:
  1. Click Save at the top of the dialog box. The Save Reduce File Size Options dialog box appears.
  2. Enter a name for the configuration in the Save Reduce File Size Options as field and click OK.
4. Click OK. The Reduce File Size Custom Settings dialog box closes.
To apply these file reduction settings to the PDF:
1. Click OK. A Save As dialog box appears.
2. Enter a name for the new PDF in the File Name field. If desired, browse to a new location to save it (by default, Revu will save it in the same folder as the original).
Note: If you do not specify a new name, a dialog box will appear asking for confirmation that the original PDF should be replaced with the compressed file.
1. Click Save. The file is compressed and saved. The Reduce File Size Results report opens.
2. Click Close.

To leave the PDF in its present state, click Cancel. The Reduce File Size dialog box closes and the file is not compressed.

Issue

You plotted from AutoCAD to PDF, and the file size is too large. You need to reduce your PDF file size.

Cause

Reduce File Size In Autocad

PDFs created from AutoCAD are a vector-based graphic file. The more vector information a PDF contains, the larger the file size. Your drawing likely includes a number of objects that use an excessive amount of vector information, which is causing the file size to balloon. The steps below will help you troubleshoot your drawing to identify and eliminate these problematic objects.

Solution

Need to reduce the file size quickly, and don't have time to troubleshoot your drawing for what might be causing the large file size? We recommend using a free website called SmallPDF.com to reduce the size of PDF files.

The following troubleshooting steps will minimize the file sizes of PDFs you create when plotting, but they're also AutoCAD best practices for optimal drawing performance. AutoCAD reads vectors in much the same way as PDFs do. These steps will improve your drawing's AutoCAD performance dramatically, giving a boost to your daily drafting speed.

1. Is this a colorized rendering plan?

If so, the colorization may be contributing to the large file size. Use the recommendations in the following articles to reduce your file size:

2. Is your drawing corrupt?

A corrupt drawing file can result in an excessively large PDF size. Follow our steps to clean your drawing and all Xrefs.

3. Does the drawing include extremely dense hatches?

If so, these hatches may be increasing the file size. For example, sand hatches use vector information for each dot. For a line-based hatch, each line adds more vector information. Try increasing the scale of your hatches to reduce PDF size.

Important: You may have some solid-looking hatches that are actually extremely dense hatch patterns. Switch these hatches to an actual solid pattern to reduce the file size.

4. Does the drawing use complex plant symbols?

As with hatches, the more lines, the larger the file size. Do you have a lot of shrub symbols using a detailed symbol? Try switching them out for our default simple symbols to see how the PDF size is affected. Tree symbols can also have this issue.

5. Does your drawing include lots of gradients?

If so, the gradients may also be causing the problem. We recommend avoiding the use of gradients in AutoCAD. Too many gradients can slow performance and make PDFs unusable.

See our steps for eliminating gradients from your drawing.

6. Does your drawing include a hatch with an overly complex boundary?

A hatch placed with a pickpoint can frequently pick up a convoluted boundary that you didn't intend. We've seen this type of boundary spike single pages up 25 MB or more for a single page PDF.

The example to the right shows an actual hatch that caused a 100MB spike in PDF file size over a multi-page PDF output, crashing AutoCAD and the PDF reader in the process.

If your drawing includes a hatch that fits this description, the solution is to draw polylines for the hatch boundary, then place the hatch using polyline boundary selections – for both the external border and any internal islands – rather than pickpoints.

7. Does your drawing include a hatch created with a corrupt PAT (.pat) file?

A corrupt PAT file can increase PDF file size. You can confirm a problem PAT file by placing that hatch in an otherwise-blank drawing. If you can replicate the huge PDF size from that drawing containing only that hatch, you'll know that hatch's PAT file is causing the issue.

How To Reduce File Size Autocad

After isolating and identifying the problem hatch, try using a different hatch pattern with a similar appearance instead.

8. Does your drawing contain large images?

PDFs generated from AutoCAD are always vector based rather than raster. If you reference large file size JPGs, PNGs, TIFFs, or other PDFs, the entire file size of those images will be included in the resulting plotted vector PDF.

You can address this issue by either:

Resaving the referenced images as much smaller files (we recommend using JPGs or PNGs), or
Using a PDF editor such as SmallPDF.com to flatten the PDF to raster

9. None of the above? Isolate the issue.

Because a large PDF size is almost always caused by an issue in your CAD drawing, isolating that issue is a great way to find out what is causing it.

If you've addressed all the common causes of large PDF files listed above (colorized plan/too many solid or gradient hatches, dense hatches, overly complex linework, problematic hatch boundaries, corruption, etc.), it's time to do some isolation troubleshooting.

9A.Save As to a new file name. You'll be deleting objects, and you don't want to save over your original file accidentally.

9B. Plot each layout separately (do not use the PUBLISH command). Identify which individual sheets have a file size issue. Try to determine what is the same about them.

9C. Start systematically deleting items from a problem layout and then plotting to PDF after each test to see how it affects the file size.

How our technicians would diagnose this issue

Here's an example of how we located and diagnosed the problem hatch pictured above: