@Thomas Richard Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately updating hasn't helped. Is there a known bug with exporting figures to pdf that might explain my problem?

@Mac Dude 

Changing from open diamonds to diagonal crosses slightly increased (!) the size of my file. I had hoped that fewer

line segments per point for 10^5 points might reduce the file size. Even worse, I can't view the new file with ghostscript (it complains the file is damaged), when I was able to view the old one.

I have seen other comments on plots, such as

http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/134845-Inappropriate-Printing-Of-Images-And

and I am wondering if I am experiencing a bug with Maple 16.00.

I have asked our IT people to upgrade, as other plot/export bugs are known

http://www.maplesoft.com/support/Faqs/detail.aspx?sid=133099&cid=359

It would be good if a representative of @Maple would advise on this as that way we may not have to

reinvent the wheel.

@Mac Dude thanks for your note. I'm sure this will be useful if I ever want to excise figures from the worksheet.
I should have said that I'm using Maple 16 on a Linux machine, (kernelopts(version) givesMarch 3 2012, Build 732982).

In this case, I want to take the whole 100Mb Maple worksheet (including figures) and export it all as a pdf so that it can be an appendix. I'd hoped that I could compress the figures before the export.

Your tip on trying to change the plotting symbol (I am using the default for "plot", which looks like a hollow diamond) will be a good way of reducing the size of the file before export. I will try "symbol=diagonalcross" and see what happens.

I'd still like to know if there is a way of compressing a graph in the worksheet in preparation for the export. Maybe this isn't the right way to look at the problem  and I should look at packages which can compress the exported pdf.

I have already tried and failed with ghostscript, various versions on various machines. Maybe I can browse for other packages like pdftk.

I'll be happy for any suggestions.

Best regards,

jason