Printing to PDF/Export to PDF taking an age to complete

[davidchamberlain2]

Hi all,

I have a Pro project that has a lot of layers. I need to produce a lot of PDF plans from the map frame everyday but both the print (to PDF ) or Export to PDF takes far too long to be of use. I would say on average each plan is taking between 5-10 mins. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this process to run so slowly? I work for a Council and all the layers are stored on the SDE or as map services in portal. This isn't a problem specific to me, all employees have the same issue.

Thank you

Dave

[AubriKinghorn]

Hi Dave,

Can I ask what version of Pro you are using? Changes were made in later versions to improve export times. Also, sadly SDE databases are a little slower than local databases because the data connections need to be made. 

Cheers,

Aubri

[davidchamberlain2]

Hi Aubri,

We are using 2.8.8. Anything you can think of to try and improve things would be appreciated.

Thanks

Dave

[DougGreen]

@davidchamberlain2, there are some other things I would check in your situation.

• Projections
  • Do all of the layers in the map have the same projection? If not, when rendering many features in an export, this can cause slower-than-normal export times
  • Using ESRI Basemaps in Web Mercator underneath local data in a local projection is a common cause of this especially when you change the map to be in the local projection. Drawing the basemaps in anything other than their Web Mercator projection really slows things down.
• Complex label classes
  • When there are many label classes on layers with tens of thousands of features, I've seen this cause really slow draw times.
• Joins and Relates
  • If any of your layers have joined or related data that are using unindexed fields for the join fields, this can definitely cause some slow export times.
• SDE Database tuning
  • Rebuild Indexes and statistics (SQL Server) or equivalent in other DBMS

Checking all these is bound to give you some improvement.

[AubriKinghorn]

2.8 had some of the big changes made so it's good that you are using that version. Later versions will have even more speed improvements, with the not-yet-released 3.1 having some significant changes to improve export time.

In the meantime, you could try exporting via python to see if that is faster. When you export via python the export runs in the front of the application. When you export via the pane the export runs behind-the-scenes. Behind the scenes is nice because you can continue working in Pro, but it does take a little more processing. Sometimes Python's export can be faster.