\nWe\n print and copy a lot of architectural and engineering plans here at \nCopy Express. Most of our clients come to us to get them printed because\n while pdfs are great to send around to everyone, they are not really \npractical on a building site where there is muck and grime, water, and \ntradies needing to make notes on how they had to \u2018adjust\u2019 things to make\n it work. The trouble is that most architectural and engineering \nsoftware is pretty clumsy at generating pdfs that are print ready or so \nbloated that they can\u2019t even be sent out by email. So to make your life \neasier I want to talk about a few common things you can do to make pdf \nplans that are simple to send and print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Even\n in this, the second decade of the 21st century, people are still making\n programs that have a print output but can\u2019t save to a PDF file. If you \nhaving to use such a program then the simplest solution is to install a \nPDF printer driver. This creates a new printer on your system that will \ncreate a pdf when you print it. Cute PDF<\/a> and Bullzip PDF Printer<\/a>\n both work well, can use all different paper sizes, have lots of \ndifferent settings for file size vrs file detail, and are free for \npersonal use. That being said Operating systems like Windows 10 have a \nPrint to PDF printer already part of the system so just use that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most\n architectural\/engineering programs allow you to have hundreds of layers\n to help organize and structure the plan. Eventually these support \nlayers get turned off so you don\u2019t see them but they are still in the \ndocument. They also get saved to any pdf you generate adding bulking up \nthe file while not adding anything useful to the document printing \nprocess.. When we print a pdf, our printers have to render every layer \non the whole page to be able to print it, known as rasterizing, even if \nit\u2019s not visible just in case another later visible layer calls on it \nfor information. It will slow down the printing process as the printer \nit has to crunch every printing dot of every layer, and in some cases \neven crash the printer if it runs out of memory to store it all. (It \ntakes 8.5 million dots to do a standard quality A1 or 32gb of memory.) \nlf your program supports saving to pdf, you may have to the option save \nonly visible layers or exclude hidden ones, then please use it for a \nsmaller speeder file. If you are using a PDF printer driver, they tend \nto ignore hidden layers so you will end up with a print ready file at \nthe end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because\n plans tend to be largely vector information that can smoothly scale to \nany size, the pdf page size is largely not a problem for printing at a \ndifferent size. The only exception to this is bitmap graphics, like \nphotos, which tend to be saved for the size the page has been set too. \nThis means scaling them up too much can result in pixelated\/grainy \nimages when printed. If that is an issue, save the pdf at the extended \nprinted page size and let us worry about the rest. You may also it \nproblems if you are dealing with custom page sizes or non metric ones, \nthe US C\/D\/E drawing size are very common example. Again if you need it \nto be an mesure accurate drawing, set the page size to be the next size \nlarger, or let us know before we print so we can set a custom printing \nsize on the printer. If you do want to print on a non metric sized \npaper, we can source it but it takes some time to get in and cost much \nmore than the matching standard papers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\n have no problem with dealing lots of single page files or a multi page \ndocument. Just tell us what pages need to be printed and we will take \ncare of the rest. If you want a smaller single file, we can use special \nsoftware on it for you, stripping out redundant data (like hidden \nlayers) and merge them into one easy to use and send file. That same \nsoftware can also be used to clean up scans of older plans, getting rid \nof damage and making sure that everything is even and consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes\n you will need to have plans on site or easy to quickly flick through to\n find information. We can staple large size size pages together to keep \nthem together. If it\u2019s in a situation of being exposed to the muck and \ngrime, them we can laminate those pages too, meaning no matter how wet \nor muddy the site gets, you can make them readable by a quick hose down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n A\n lot of plans end up being modified on site for practical reasons \nresulting in notes being written on them. Naturally people need to have \ncopies of those changes that have been signed off. We can scan plans of \nany size and turn them back into pdfs for to make them quick to copy and\n email anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has been a quick overview of how to \ndeal with printing PDF plans and how we at Copy Express can make it even\n easier and better for you. If you need to know more, we a just a simple\n email or phone call away.\n\n<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We print and copy a lot of architectural and engineering plans here at Copy Express. Most of our clients come to us to get them printed because while pdfs are great to send around to everyone, they are not really practical on a building site where there is muck and grime, water, and tradies needing … Continue reading “Dealing with Big PDFs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Turn off invisible layers
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nPaper Sizes
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nMultiple single pages or multi page files
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nBundling and waterproofing
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nArchiving completed work
<\/h3>\n\n\n\n