Doc Flatten Function. Flattens and compresses the current page. ABCpdf .NET PDF Library.

Flattens and compresses the current page.

[C#]
int Flatten()

[Visual Basic]
Function Flatten() As Integer

Objects added to a page are stored as individual layers. Calling this method combines all the layers on the current page and then re-compresses the layer data.

For pages that contain only a few layers the reduction in size will be minimal. However for pages which contain complex tables with many items, flattening can reduce the size of the output PDF by a factor of five or more.

Note that flattening will delete all the items currently on the page and replace them with a new compressed item. This means that Object IDs previously obtained from calls such as AddText or FrameRect will no longer be valid.

See the Small Table Example and Large Table Example.