Lines on top of lines

Question

I use e-Drawings to create vector line art from solidworks 3D drawings. I can save it as a PDF and then open it up in illustrator for editing as vector art. It works very well, but I find that the resulting illustrator file is rather large, because there are one or two identical copies of the drawing on top of each other. (If you delete one line, you can see another identical line underneath.)
The question is: Is there a way in illustrator of selecting all lines and merging the identical lines with those that are underneath? The copies are all on one layer.
I was kind of hoping that the "merge" would work, or some sort of path command, but no luck yet. To delete a copy, I have to get in and delete one line element at a time until I am left with one. The file size is then smaller (then InDesign is happier and can export a reasonable-sized PDF of the final technical manual).
Thanks for your help!
best regards,
Steve
Illustrator CS4, PC.

Answer 1

Hi, check this out, it works with textFrames, CompoundPaths and pathItems...GroupItems, not so well...I give up for now, I'll work something out if needed. The script relies on comparing the bounds of each object against the object right on top of it, assuming the created duplicates live right next to each other in the stacking order.
as usual, test on a copy of you file, just in case
#target illustrator
// script.name = removeDuplicatePageItems.jsx;
// script.description = tested w/ textFrames, compound paths, pathItems only;
// script.required = one document with some art in it;
// script.parent = CarlosCanto // 7/14/11;
// script.elegant = false;
// script.notes = so far it does not work with dupped Groups, will deal with them if requested;
var idoc = app.activeDocument;
var pgitems = idoc.pageItems;
var dups = [];
for (i=1; i<pgitems.length; i++)
          if (pgitems[i].controlBounds.toString()==pgitems[i-1].controlBounds.toString())
                    if (pgitems[i].parent.typename!="GroupItem")
                         dups.push(pgitems[i]);
for (j=0; j<dups.length; j++)
     dups[j].remove();
     //dups[j].selected = true;