Documentation
About Archicad's documenting tools, views, model filtering, layouts, publishing, etc.

Printing to PDF

Anonymous
Not applicable
When I print a layout as pdf it is such a big file. I have Archicad 11 and acrobat 9. The print services have issues printing my files. Please help
10 REPLIES 10
Eduardo Rolon
Moderator
Do not print use the Publisher to create your pdf's.
Eduardo Rolón AIA NCARB
AC27 US/INT -> AC08

Macbook Pro M1 Max 64GB ram, OS X 10.XX latest
another Moderator

Anonymous
Not applicable
Try: file - save as
Anonymous
Not applicable
how big are the PDFs ? Are they just drawings or do you have pictures in the layout? Renderings, Photography, etc.
I you have pictures you should try to reduce their size. They can add a lot of Mb to your plans. Save them a jpgs and control their size before output.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Off topic but can one load the PDF writer on the Windows platform with out loading the AC?
Thanks,
Joseph
Erika Epstein
Booster
Hi Joseph,
I'm not sure if I am understanding what you are wanting, but here goes anyway 🙂
There are a number of free generic pdf writers like the amunyi one that graphisoft used to provide with AC. Adobe's pdf writer can be bought and installed on windows. Unlike mac, it does not come with the OS.

HTH
Erika
Architect, Consultant
MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX 10.11.1
AC5-18
Onuma System

"Implementing Successful Building Information Modeling"
Anonymous
Not applicable
It might be helpful to know if your using mac or pc... Also explain precisely how you create PDFs as there is more than one way...

I have had problems in the past with the PDFs created by AC being of a newer version than our print services being able to support... In the end the print services had to upgrade their software for it to print correctly... This does seem unlikely though since you're using and older version of AC....
Anonymous
Not applicable
Erika wrote:
Hi Joseph,
I'm not sure if I am understanding what you are wanting, but here goes anyway 🙂
There are a number of free generic pdf writers like the amunyi one that graphisoft used to provide with AC. Adobe's pdf writer can be bought and installed on windows. Unlike mac, it does not come with the OS.

HTH
Thanks,
Downloaded CuteWriter.exe and it works fine.
Thanks,
Joseph
Arcadia
Booster
In relation to printing to PDF's in general I found that I get a higher quality PDF print using a 3rd party free PDF printer I got from download.com. I also find the process of setting up publisher a pain in the butt. basically I print straight from my layout book to the external PDF printer where I can then adjust the print quality and dpi (and hence file sizes) at will and reorder pages etc if needed then print to a single PDF file. I find this a very simple and better result than using the publisher sets.
V12-V27, PC: Ryzen 9 3950X, 64g RAM, RTX5000, Win 11
Laura Yanoviak
Advocate
Arcadia wrote:
I also find the process of setting up publisher a pain in the butt.
Really? Are you sure you're using it correctly???
MacBook Pro Apple M2 Max, 96 GB of RAM
AC26 US (5002) on Mac OS Ventura 13.5