We are trying to make an online upload for permit plans and the department requires the entire drawing set to be a single PDF file, max 50 mb. Our drawing set is 250 sheets and was 200 mb. After various reduce printing, flattening, and online file reducing apps... it is now 85 mb. We contacted the department and asked if we can split the files to two <50 mb files. They responded that we'd be flagged incomplete.
Someone suggested converting individual sheets to jpg in illustrator then making them back to PDF to reduce size. Is there a better way? Or do we have to resort to simply eliminating sheets then resubmit after objections.
I had similar issues with portfolios and would use indesign to have a text layer and image layer, I reduced the quality of the rasterised images while keeping all the text in Indesign vectorised so nice and crisp. This worked for my portfolio, but for 250 sheets generated in any cad or bim program, I’m not sure if image/drawing and text can be separated like that. Never had to figure that one out...hope someone here has a solution.
Check your survey sheet. Sometimes my energy, survey, zoning, or front-end sheets are extra heavy. Take a few of these out and see if your set drops drastically in size. Then you know it's those few sheets creating the issue. Most of the time, standard CAD sheets aren't veyr large.
yes, we found that the survey & fema map sheets to be very heavy. Cutting weight on them now. But still have too much to cut. Will have to remove some sheets...
Mar 25, 21 10:08 am ·
·
SlammingMiruvor
It's going to be less about the number of sheets themselves, and more about the content. Do you have any complex hatch patterns/filled regions? Any unique/complex line types? Images or PDFs linked onto sheets? Stuff like that will have a bigger impact over sheet number of sheets.
Not to hijack this thread, but I sort of agree. It has been my observation that in order to adhere to strict office guidelines for sheet set-up, there appears to be an awful lot of white space in drawing sets. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a standardized set of rules for where to find plans and details. But it frustrates me when I see sheets with one detail on them--consistently.
I have a one-page permit set of plans my father drew for a house. Site plan, foundation, floor plans, section, elevations (@ 1/8"), kitchen elevations, plumbing riser on a 24x36 sheet. Granted, it was a long time ago and not a particularly large house, but the information density was just right.
The tendency to make a project appear more laborious by spreading it over many pages - exacerbated by CAD - is called 'papering the file'. It's an old lawyers trick, where they show up with a giant mountain of boilerplate and filler documents that nobody will ever look at.
And the Michael Graves addition to the Denver Central Library is 8 volumes, consisting of 866 sheets across Architectural, Structural, MEP, Fire Protection, Signage, and AV. Architecture and Structural alone is 4 volumes, 433 sheets. They broke ground on the Sears Tower site 2 years after seatbelts became a federal requirement for new vehicles. As impressive as it is to build that off 35 sheets, shit has changed and pretending like it's possible in today's environment is a
joke.
The amount of effort to smash more information onto fewer sheets takes time and effort that should be used to make the building better. Combine this with a good understanding of what needs to be drawn once vs. multiple times (or at all), then add in all of the sheets required by the moron at the AHJ who wants to see the 500 pages of code copied from the book onto your G sheets and you're never going to see a 31 sheet set for a project in an incorporated County / City again.
With all due respect, the broad brushes trying to paint people as incompetent due to set size need to stop trying to describe the elephant because they saw an elephant pube one time.
You give a contractor a set with only 35 sheets today to do anything other than a small TI, and you'll have 35k RFIs, and probably just as many change orders.
I did not even want to respond to those who are complaining about how 250 sheets are out of control! But If you think you can build a mid-rise building with 35 sheets let alone 100 sheets you are naive and have not worked on a complicated project with many consultants that have to meet various agency approvals.
we spent half the day trying all methods known under the sun to compress the PDF size. we found smallpdf.com to be useful. But at the end you can only compress so far before it compromises legibility. we ended up removing 30 sheets to make the cut off size to submit.
Pre- covid the last big project we submitted; they wanted 16 full-sized sets and 12 half-size sets. that's a lot of fkn toilet paper! Now they don't accept physical plans and some IT guy figured 50 mb should be enough. what a crazy day!
Reduce PDF to incredibly small size
We are trying to make an online upload for permit plans and the department requires the entire drawing set to be a single PDF file, max 50 mb. Our drawing set is 250 sheets and was 200 mb. After various reduce printing, flattening, and online file reducing apps... it is now 85 mb. We contacted the department and asked if we can split the files to two <50 mb files. They responded that we'd be flagged incomplete.
Someone suggested converting individual sheets to jpg in illustrator then making them back to PDF to reduce size. Is there a better way? Or do we have to resort to simply eliminating sheets then resubmit after objections.
WTF...
a jpeg (raster file) will almost definitely be larger than a vector based PDF. Any downsampling will make your text unreadable.
Not sure what a good solution is other than yelling at the building dept about unreasonable file restrictions. Good luck.
250 sheets?
Are you billing by the page or by the pound?
it's a good sized new mid-rise building. 250 sheets was the bare minimum include zoning, arch, civil, interior, SOE, structure , MEP.
Yeah Miles, we did a 100,000 sf school and it was over 300 sheets with not a superfluous drawing in the entire set.
I had similar issues with portfolios and would use indesign to have a text layer and image layer, I reduced the quality of the rasterised images while keeping all the text in Indesign vectorised so nice and crisp. This worked for my portfolio, but for 250 sheets generated in any cad or bim program, I’m not sure if image/drawing and text can be separated like that. Never had to figure that one out...hope someone here has a solution.
Check your survey sheet. Sometimes my energy, survey, zoning, or front-end sheets are extra heavy. Take a few of these out and see if your set drops drastically in size. Then you know it's those few sheets creating the issue. Most of the time, standard CAD sheets aren't veyr large.
And 250 sheets is totally normal in my world.
yes, we found that the survey & fema map sheets to be very heavy. Cutting weight on them now. But still have too much to cut. Will have to remove some sheets...
It's going to be less about the number of sheets themselves, and more about the content. Do you have any complex hatch patterns/filled regions? Any unique/complex line types? Images or PDFs linked onto sheets? Stuff like that will have a bigger impact over sheet number of sheets.
I'm not positive but I believe flattening layers reduces the file size. If the sheets are in color, save as many as you can as black and white.
Sears Tower was 35 sheets, structure and architecture. If you've got 250 sheets you fucked up somewhere.
Not to hijack this thread, but I sort of agree. It has been my observation that in order to adhere to strict office guidelines for sheet set-up, there appears to be an awful lot of white space in drawing sets. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a standardized set of rules for where to find plans and details. But it frustrates me when I see sheets with one detail on them--consistently.
I have a one-page permit set of plans my father drew for a house. Site plan, foundation, floor plans, section, elevations (@ 1/8"), kitchen elevations, plumbing riser on a 24x36 sheet. Granted, it was a long time ago and not a particularly large house, but the information density was just right.
The tendency to make a project appear more laborious by spreading it over many pages - exacerbated by CAD - is called 'papering the file'. It's an old lawyers trick, where they show up with a giant mountain of boilerplate and filler documents that nobody will ever look at.
And the Michael Graves addition to the Denver Central Library is 8 volumes, consisting of 866 sheets across Architectural, Structural, MEP, Fire Protection, Signage, and AV. Architecture and Structural alone is 4 volumes, 433 sheets. They broke ground on the Sears Tower site 2 years after seatbelts became a federal requirement for new vehicles. As impressive as it is to build that off 35 sheets, shit has changed and pretending like it's possible in today's environment is a joke.
The amount of effort to smash more information onto fewer sheets takes time and effort that should be used to make the building better. Combine this with a good understanding of what needs to be drawn once vs. multiple times (or at all), then add in all of the sheets required by the moron at the AHJ who wants to see the 500 pages of code copied from the book onto your G sheets and you're never going to see a 31 sheet set for a project in an incorporated County / City again.
With all due respect, the broad brushes trying to paint people as incompetent due to set size need to stop trying to describe the elephant because they saw an elephant pube one time.
You give a contractor a set with only 35 sheets today to do anything other than a small TI, and you'll have 35k RFIs, and probably just as many change orders.
My beef is with AHJs who, in the time of PDFs and tablets, still make stupid fucking requirements like this. Get a bigger server, you numb fucks.
I did not even want to respond to those who are complaining about how 250 sheets are out of control! But If you think you can build a mid-rise building with 35 sheets let alone 100 sheets you are naive and have not worked on a complicated project with many consultants that have to meet various agency approvals.
we spent half the day trying all methods known under the sun to compress the PDF size. we found smallpdf.com to be useful. But at the end you can only compress so far before it compromises legibility. we ended up removing 30 sheets to make the cut off size to submit.
Pre- covid the last big project we submitted; they wanted 16 full-sized sets and 12 half-size sets. that's a lot of fkn toilet paper! Now they don't accept physical plans and some IT guy figured 50 mb should be enough. what a crazy day!
Name and shame the jurisdiction?
I just looked up the size of the PDF we have of the 2018 IBC with commentary ... 97 MB.
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