Why this happens
Nexxis sends your uploaded documents to Google's Gemini AI to check them against the New Zealand Building Code. The AI has a maximum amount of content it can read in one go — roughly equivalent to about 2,000 pages of plain text. When your project's total content goes over that limit, the review can't start.
The fix is to remove or shrink documents you don't strictly need for the compliance audit. Your credit has already been refunded — once you're under the limit, just click "Start Review" again at no extra cost.
What to look for
Open your project's Documents tab and look for any of these — they're the most common reasons projects go over the limit:
1. Manufacturer brochures, datasheets, and catalogues
A 50-page catalogue showing every variant of a fan kit or every colour of a
roofing product is rarely useful to the audit. The AI only needs the **specific
datasheet for the product you're actually using**, not the whole product range.
**Remove the full catalogue, upload just the relevant page or product spec.**
2. Warranty and care-instruction PDFs
These often come bundled with manufacturer downloads but don't contain
compliance information. **Remove them entirely.**
3. RFI history or correspondence from a previous consent attempt
If you're re-running a project, old back-and-forth with the council isn't part
of the new submission. **Remove it.**
4. Marketing material that came in the same folder
Pricing sheets, sales flyers, and product brochures sometimes get scooped up
when you bulk-select a supplier's folder. **Remove them.**
5. Very large scans of plans that could be compressed
If a plan PDF is over ~10 MB, it's often because it's been exported from CAD
software at full scan resolution. Free tools like
[smallpdf.com](https://smallpdf.com/compress-pdf) or
[ilovepdf.com](https://www.ilovepdf.com/compress_pdf) will shrink it by 50-80%
without losing readable detail. Compress it, then **delete the original in
Nexxis and re-upload the compressed version**.
6. PDFs that are mostly images with hidden text duplicated
Some scanned plans get "OCR'd" with the recognised text added as a hidden
layer. This roughly doubles the content the AI has to read. If you have the
original CAD-exported PDF, **use that instead of the scanned one**.
How to trim documents in Nexxis
- Go to your project and click the Documents tab.
- Look down the list — file sizes and page counts are shown next to each file.
- Click the 🗑 icon next to any file you want to remove. Confirm.
- When you're done, click Start Review at the top of the project page.
You don't have to re-upload anything else — the rest of your files stay where
they are.
Still over the limit after removing the obvious junk?
A few more options:
- Extract specific pages from large documents using
[ilovepdf.com](https://www.ilovepdf.com/split_pdf) or Adobe Acrobat
(File → Save as Other → Extract Pages). Upload only the pages that matter
for the audit.
- Split a multi-document PDF that has several reports in one file —
upload only the report relevant to the current consent.
- Check for duplicates — you may have the same datasheet uploaded twice
under different file names.
If you've trimmed everything you reasonably can and you're still over the limit, get in touch — that's usually a sign the project is too large for our current model and we may need to look at it together.
