Exporting to PDF

Question

I have an 8.5 x 11 layout that I want to export to pdf. Some of the feature classes have a lot of complex polygon features.

I've been playing around with the export options, but I can't seem to get the resulting pdf size under 1.2 GB... which takes several minutes to create. This is of course totally impractical...

Seems like it might be due to the size/complexity of the feature classes... Any way around it?

JoshuaBixby · Answer

I had success using third-party PDF printer drivers (Adobe, PrimoPDF, etc...).  I recently had a 8 1/2 x 11 map layout with a moderately dense polygon layer.  Regardless of the settings in ArcGIS Pro, I couldn't get the PDF size down below 25 MB, and there were oddities with the PDF like patches of missing or extremely slow drawing polygons.  Using a third-party PDF printer driver, I got a rather nice looking PDF for 1.75 MB.

I suspect the issue has to do with rasterizing vector layers, or not rasterizing them.  When using a third-party PDF printer driver, it seems Pro is forgoing vectors altogether and rasterizing everything, hence why my PDF is only slightly larger than a PNG export of the same map.  When doing a PDF export straight out of ArcGIS Pro, it must be trying to hang onto most of the vector data, which would make sense for a really large map layout but not so much for an 8 1/2 x 11 layout.  Something similar happens with SVGs with small map layouts because I get huge exports of those as well when a dense map layer is involved.

Honestly, I think it is just poor code that isn't taking the map layout into consideration when determining how dense the vector output should be when exporting straight to PDFs.  In ArcGIS Desktop, the issue doesn't seem to be as noticeable.

DanPatterson_Retired · Answer

have you had any luck exporting to another format keeping losses low then using other software to get it out to pdf?  I have used tiffs, png (etc)... I don't know what they are using to produce pdfs

CameronWallace · Answer

I can screenshot just fine... And an export to *.jpg works ok too. It's the lack of ArcGIS Pro's ability to deal with huge vector data-set's when exporting to *.pdf that's bugging me. I've long since worked around the issue... but it's a work-around.