I have a very high resolution PDF file (19 megs) that I created in Illustrator. I've brought it to 2 different offset printing companies and they haven't been able to properly RIP the image from the PDF to make the plate. It has apparently been crippling their computers. In the Illustrator file that I created I used an extremely thin line stroke of .15 per line and there are hundreds of these lines all the same thickness in the 11 x 17 image. Does anyone have any ideas how it might be possible to RIP this file properly or how the file could be slightly altered to make it possible to RIP?

Any Help Would Be Appreciated,

Lines and Artworks may slow down the RIP, but a Transparent effect may totally cripple the RIP in rasterizing the File. Transparent effect is like a drop shadow, glow or blurred lineart.

I'm having a similar experience. The illustrator file that im working on is only 27 mb in its raw format. But every time i try to print it on a digital printer, the spooling takes a long time. And when the spooling is "completed", it won't print because some error occurred during the spooling. I found out that it was the transparency on one of the vector images that's causing the problem.

What I did was convert it eps format. It saved the day but I'm still not convinced that this is the only solution. I tried flattening the artwork but the effect that I achieved with the transparent image is not the same.

Export it as PDF-X1A, it simplifies the document like no other, including flattening transparencies. If that doesn't work, try converting it to PDF using another PDF converter, like PDFCreator.

Also export to postscript level 2 then redistilling works for us.