PDFsharp & MigraDoc Forum

Hello,

I have a group of vector drawings (a symbol) that can appear multiple times though out a document. This symbol can be repeated several thousand times depending on the users data. I am trying to determine the most efficient way to draw this to my PDF. Drawing performance is important, but I am also trying to keep the file size as small as possible. Also, the drawings need to be vector and not rasterized.

I know in a PDF, once you add an image to the document, that image can be used in multiple times without having to add multiple copies of that image to the document. I am basically looking for a way to do this, but with vector drawings, not raster. I would like to draw the vector drawings once, and then tell the PDF to reference that drawing for the subsequent draws.

Anybody know of a way to do this or have a better idea?

Thanks
Craig

I'm with you here.

Was looking for a similar solution too, didn't find one (yet...).

Hey omrisela,

I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it or not, but after some investigation I've decided to use the XForm object to group my vector drawings. In one of my test cases I saw a 252% file size decrease when I drew my vectors to a XForm and then drew the XForm to the PDF, as opposed to drawing the vectors straight to the PDF.

It seems that in my test cases, for every XForm you add to the PDF, the document size increase by about 30 - 40 kb (I'm sure it really depends on what all you are drawing to the XForm so this number could get much higher). So if you just have something you are drawing once or twice it may not be worth it. However, if you are drawing something thousands of times like I am, you may want to look into it.

If you come up with any ideas, please share them.

Craig

Hi!

XForm would also be my suggestion.

When comparing file sizes, always use the Release build (the Debug build creates verbose PDF files that are larger).

_________________
Regards
Thomas Hoevel
PDFsharp Team

Thanks Thomas!

I was using debug mode and when I switched to release mode I saw a very significant file size drop!

Craig