Revit Specific PDF Creator

[Wish List System]

Summary: Most available PDF creators don't have the Algorithm settings to handle surface patterns in Vector settings.

Description: Since at the moment, 100% deliverable is a PDF output for all jobs, Autodesk has to provide an inbuilt PDF creator to handle complex surface patterns in Vector settings. All the available PDF creators in the market are not suited for Revit drawings, it makes the PDF's slow to regenerate and blows up the PDF file size.

Product and Feature: Revit Architecture - Other

Submitted By: Arun6000 on 08/22/2017

[krzystoff]

I agree. ArchiCAD has had a PDF creation feature for over a decade, and that is not an isolated example, there is numerous other software that offers inbuilt/included PDF functionality.
There are countless PDF creation tools on the market and many of them range from terrible (Microsoft includes one in Windows 10 which doesn't even print to large format pages) to fair (Acrobat's Distiller is expensive and limited in function), to good (the free PDFCreator is fast and feature rich), to excellent (Bluebeam which has ample functionality along with PDF export/edit and can create high-resolution, and highly compressed PDFs from Revit).
However, none of them integrates particularly well with Revit, and none I have used is able to extract PDF filenames in a usable manner -- for example, we can create a quick multipage PDF with a manually entered filename using any of these tools, but should you need to split the files into one PDF per sheet, as many project management and distribution sites require, you find you must do everything by hand, because Revit doesn't transmit the level of data to the printer (eg. sheet number / simplified sheet name / customised project information, revision number and date / etc.) -- resulting in a lengthy, meaningless filepath and filename. If the functionality was included within Revit it would make many users' workdays much easier.

[Arun6000]

I agree. ArchiCAD has had a PDF creation feature for over a decade, and that is not an isolated example, there is numerous other software that offers inbuilt/included PDF functionality.
There are countless PDF creation tools on the market and many of them range from terrible (Microsoft includes one in Windows 10 which doesn't even print to large format pages) to fair (Acrobat's Distiller is expensive and limited in function), to good (the free PDFCreator is fast and feature rich), to excellent (Bluebeam which has ample functionality along with PDF export/edit and can create high-resolution, and highly compressed PDFs from Revit).
However, none of them integrates particularly well with Revit, and none I have used is able to extract PDF filenames in a usable manner -- for example, we can create a quick multipage PDF with a manually entered filename using any of these tools, but should you need to split the files into one PDF per sheet, as many project management and distribution sites require, you find you must do everything by hand, because Revit doesn't transmit the level of data to the printer (eg. sheet number / simplified sheet name / customised project information, revision number and date / etc.) -- resulting in a lengthy, meaningless filepath and filename. If the functionality was included within Revit it would make many users' workdays much easier.

We use external plugins for custom PDF file naming/batch printing & batch Revsions using shared parameter data, Yes you are right none of the PDF creators do this.