Publisher Using Excessive RAM when inserting PDFs

[jake from iDS]

Hello everyone,

We have run into an issue with the speed/ performance of a fairly small file (56mb) and it is using upwards of 46GB of ram. We noticed it start to slow down when importing PDFs onto the sheets. We have recently switched to affinity. Perhaps there is a different way to place linked PDFs? It shouldn't be an issue as we have been doing the same task we are here, on much larger scales, for years in InDesign. So hopefully it's just a user error.

Thanks in advance!!

[Dan C]

Hi @jake from iDS,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

Using Document > Resource Manager you can view your placed .PDF files and convert these between Linked or Embedded, using the relevant options along the bottom of this dialog.

You can also change the default documents policy for any new files placed through File > Document Setup and changing the Image Placement Policy.

Does changing your placed PDF documents improve the performance of this file? Please note you may need to use File > Save As to create a new version of the Affinity file, then restart the app and reopen the document after changing the placement policy for these files.

Please do let me know if this helps

[jake from iDS]

Hello Dan,

Thank you for the advice. I checked the resource manager and everything is linked, which we would prefer if we make changes. Just to try it I embedded everything and the file will not open after saving a new copy.  It is now resting around 55GB of ram just being used by Publisher. Do you think the file is corrupt or the program cant handle this type of use? Overall there isn't even that much data linked to the file, less than 100MB total. 

[LondonSquirrel]

I have a question. Are these PDFs created by AutoCAD?

[jake from iDS]

Autodesk Revit. They have to be vector based or the quality is very bad when we plot

[LondonSquirrel]

3 minutes ago, jake from iDS said:

Autodesk Revit. They have to be vector based or the quality is very bad when we plot

I asked because there are at least a couple of other posts about very high RAM usage or APub being very slow with certain placed PDFs, and this occurred with AutoCAD exports. I'm posting one link down below. Despite the PDFs being small in themselves, the amount of RAM they used seemed to be completely out of proportion. So your post rang a bell. I don't there was/is a solution to this. But it's information for your perusal. Are you able to upload one of the PDFs here? 

 

 

 

[jake from iDS]

For sure. We went through and simplified the linework as much as we could.

KEYPLAN - OVERALL BUILDING-GREY-HATCH-SIMPLE.pdf

[LondonSquirrel]

So... as I suspected, it looks simple but it is remarkably complex if you select all/ungroup all:

To give some clue of how complex this PDF really is, here is a tiny selection. If I just look at this drawing, not having seen it before, I would say this selection has maybe a dozen or so objects at most. Not so, it's 2,307. Crazy...

Edited May 26, 2022 by LondonSquirrel
Rewrote to make it clearer.

[LondonSquirrel]

Taking it a small step further, how many objects do you think there are in this selection? I would guess again maybe a dozen at most. Wrong. It's 1,126. 

 

[Dan C]

Many thanks for the further information and file provided!

I can confirm this is an issue our team are aware of when placing such PDF files and we're working to improve this - I'll be sure to 'bump' the development log with your report for this now.

[jake from iDS]

So moving forward, is there a process you recommend to make the file less complex for Publisher to work with? This is a very simple file for us so it will be a major problem for us in the future.

[Dan C]

Unfortunately there's no specific suggestions I can make regarding the PDF file currently, as we're working to improve Publishers performance with such files, rather than altering the files themselves.

I believe you are a user with a corporate license however, so I will be having a member of the corp team contact your company directly regarding this, to see if we can improve things further

[jake from iDS]

I have some good news. We got that file to use around 4-5GB! It is only a temporary fix but will work for many of our daily uses. We have found if we change the print settings in Revit to export as a presentation-quality raster print, the final product is passable. It only works if you make a rasterized PDF out of Revit. Initially, we tried to rasterize using other programs, but you lose so much quality most of the exported linework doesn't print. 

It would be good to develop the program further to handle the vectors moving forward. This is only a 6-page document, and our Schematic Design books we produce with this are around 50 pages for a small project or 100-200 for a large building.

Again, we appreciate the help!

-Jake