Printing pdf's

[kimlance]

O.K. this is crazy. Why is it when I send a pdf that I've received from arch, struct,
whoever, the pdf is 723kb & when it reaches the plotter/printer it becomes 31.5 MB.
It doesn't happen all the time but it seem more often now.

[Wanderer]

O.K. this is crazy. Why is it when I send a pdf that I've received from arch, struct,
whoever, the pdf is 723kb & when it reaches the plotter/printer it becomes 31.5 MB.
It doesn't happen all the time but it seem more often now.

Hmm, maybe some details on your setup could help?

What type of plotter? Are you using a print server?
Do you know if the origins of the pdfs are the same (built in autocad driver or acrobat or bluebeam, etc?)?

[kimlance]

Plotter is a HP Designjet 1050c Plus, printer is a HP Laserjet CA111A.
Plotting thru a server. I'm quite certain they are created through autocad. The pdf's are coming from different diciplines, Arch Struct, Mech. Like I said this doesn't happen all the time, I'm wondering if it's how they are creating them.

[Liamnacuac]

What resolution are you plotting to? Adobe will default to 1200 DPI

[kimlance]

I've gone thru all the setting to make sure they are correct and have the resolution set down to 300dpi.

[cadtag]

... the pdf is 723kb & when it reaches the plotter/printer it becomes 31.5 MB...

Where are you seeing the size ballon? in the plotter queue? when you save the dwg file? or????

If it's just in the queue, it matters not. plot file size is not closely related to file size. And, both the devices you mentioned are not using postscript or pdf natively, so there's a conversion that has to happen from 'pdf' to hpgl or pcl. Not the most efficient process size-wise, but in that instance it doesn't need to be.

[kimlance]

cadtag,

Thanks for the feed back. Yes it increases when it is sent to the plotter &/or printer queue. It's bothersom because the files are so big that I can only send one drawing over at a time otherwise it overloads the plotter/printer capacity. Have you experienced this also with the increase in flie size?

[Mamma Jamma]

Within the Adobe (or whatever program) dialogue box, you should be able to go to properties (maybe "advanced" tab/button somwhere) and tell the program to "Print as image". If you can find that, I think it might fix it for you.

[cdatechguy]

As long as it plots I would not worry about it....

A simple word document of 20k can inflate to 5-10mb when sent to the printer...

[kimlance]

Mamma Jamma,

I swore I tried that yesturday when I was playing with the settings. Thanks for pointing me back in the right direction, it worked. Thanks for everyones response.