AutoCad :: Plotting To PDF Versus Plotting To Printer?
Feb 26, 2013
I'm attempting to plot a drawing with a 3d shape and a title block around it. I would like for the occluded lines to not be drawn therefore I'm using the hidden visual style and set shade plot to hidden as well.
My problem arises from the quality of the plot to PDF versus the quality coming out of a printer. It is just a 8.5x11 page. The pdf comes out with horrible anti-aliasing and jagged lines, whereas the print is entirely smooth. Is there something simple I'm missing? It would be even better to find a way to make the plot to PDF come out in vector format! I know it is possible to show the layers and have them vectorized in a PDF... How is this done?
Still trying to set up revit standards can't come to conclusion regarding plotting vector or raster. My personal (limited) experience raster plotting has been poor quality with vector the plots are cleaner and it seems I have better control of shaded areas.
I'm having problems with lineweights. It shows up too dark whenever I plot to both pdf and the printer (Kyocera KM-2560 KX). Ive tried adjusting the ctb file (changing thicknesses of colours) but to no avail. This problem does not occur for my colleagues, with exactly the same ctb file. So is it a general autocad setting problem?
When I plot directly to a plotter or to a PDF file from paper space, some of the 3d pipe model will fade out along the pipe line. It happens to some of the lines, not all. I have re-drawn the pipes and drawn them using different UCS orientations. No change. I changed the layer color, changed the tessellation, line weight. Can this problem be related to the display driver, either software or video card? I have the latest drivers. ACAD ver. 11, nvidia quatro fx-3800 card.
I have an office with 3 network printers and 18 computers with Windows XP and AutoCAD + Revit 2010 installed. I never had issues related to printers I couldn't solve myself, but this time one of the machines decided not to allow me to use a specific printer (HP Designjet 70). When I select it, it quickly change the selected printer to "None". Its the only computer in the office with the issue, and I can't find out why. I already reinstalled the printer in many ways, even using other sharing paths, its useless. I imported AutoCAD settings from other machines, no use. Cleaned print spooler folder, reseted many settings to default, set it to off-line then on-line again, deleted useless PC3 files and everything that occurred to me, but still nothing changed it. The AutoCAD doesnt emmit errors, nothing, just refuse to accept the printer.
We have a new printer/plotter in our office and Autocad cannot find the old one and so I have to select the new one. Here's the scoop:
When I am in the layout tab, everything is perfectly aligned in my layout sheet (24 x 36) and so I type plot and before the dialogue screen appears (We just got a new plotter) Autocad says: "such and such printer: This plotter config. cannot be used for blah blah blah.... The None plot device has been substituted." Which makes sense because that such and such printer is non existent. So i click ok. and the usual plot dialogue screen displays.
I select our new plotter and the exact size of my layout sheet (24 x 36) and click apply to layout and then preview it and it shows the layout cutting off my titleblock on the right hand side. So I cancel the plot (having applied the new printer and 24 x 36 config.) and look at my layout and either my layout sheet or my linework has shifted about 3/4" up and 3/4" to the side.
Why did something shift? My layout sheet was already aligned and at 24 x 36. I don't want to have to move it every time especially if I need to print off older drawings which are set up with the non existent printer. Should I or could I make autocad ignore the old printer and tell it to recognize the new one so I wont ask me every time i open an older drawing?
I have AutoCAD 2014, When I Try to Plot on HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw Color Printer. The software crashes. It even doe not show the preview. I am using Windows 7. AUTOCAD functions properly with other printers and I can plot the and HP LaserJet Pro CP1525nw Color Printer too woks well with other softwares.
I have plotted to PDF before, but on this particular drawing I'm losing some part of the drawing.
Two viewports at different scales. The larger viewport (zoomed in) plots perfectly. The smaller viewport (zoomed out) only plots the CAD layer (green line), but does not plot the Shapefiles (green dots and gray lines). Shapefiles are on their own layer, that layer is turned on. These are the only three items in model space; the black text and arrows are in paper space on the layout tab and render correctly in the large viewport.
Is it a scale issue with the shapefiles in the small viewport or a plotting issue?
I am using the geo map command to display a hybrid sat and road map behind a dwg in 2014Map3D. It displays fine on my monitor, but when I plot (whether to a plotter or to pdf) it does not include the background image map, just the vector part of the dwg. Is this a limitation of the geomap command or is it something I can fix? Usually my work is in locations where I can get raster topo and this plots fine as a background, however on the odd occasion the work is somewhere in the world where raster topo is not available and geomap is better than nothing. I can always import the dwg into Global Mapper from Blue Marble and bring in background imaging there, but then I can't plot at a specific scale.
When I plot to a pdf file from MEP 2012, all the floor plan and basic lines and text sheets plot to about a 200k file, but when I plot the spec sheet I end up with a file size of 5meg and up. I am using word2cad to import large spec sheets from word.
I'm having issues plotting using dwg to pdf. It prints perfect printing to my printer but when I create a pdf using dwg to pdf it does not print what is previewed.
I created block with solid hatches for my mark/schedule boxes and detail bubbles so I wouldn't have to trim whats behind it.
I am trying to embolden lineweights to stand out on the drawing, without them getting in the way when viewing in the drawing. I have set the lineweight in the layer dialogue box to the max size (2.xx mm), checked the "plot lineweights" in the printer dialogue and switched between none and grayscale (this is so the assigned colors will fade out in the background). Nothing I have tried thus far has changed the print output on any of my printers (virtual PDF, HP2100, HP2600n, HP2840 they are all very old). I have read through the lweight command and help sections, but I don't need it assigning the lw just getting it to properly print.
One possible problem: is the line weight relative to scale or is it absolute? I am printing at 1/8" scale, and that can't change.
I have been working with a large scale architectural drawing provided by my cleint's architects. Since I usually work in black on a white screen, I have been working from paperspace with the viewport set to.monochrome. Up until Thursday, whenever I printed to PDF, I would get a monochome image which is what is supposed to happen.
However, In order to provide my client with a colour coded image, I changed some settings and printed a colour PDF. Now I cannot get it to go back to Monochrome. What setting has changed. I opened an earlier version of the same drawing and output a PDF from that drawing - black and white PDF. Try it from the current version of the drawing, it comes out in colour.
I have compared page setup settings, output setting, viewport 'MO' settings, they are all the same. How do I get back to black and white output.
Some of my linework is not plotting. This only happens on one of my .dwg files (that I can tell), and only on certain layers. Recently drawn linework only on a few layers simply does not show up on preview or on hard copy, regardless of which printer I print to or which configuration I use. It's not a computer issue because the same issue happens if I open the file on a different computer. All layers are thawed, on and set to print.
However, if I Xref the file into a new drawing, then the linework prints. Here is a copy of the error message I receive.
Job: - Error(s) Did Not Plot
Job ID: 1 Sheet set name: Date and time started: 11/7/2012 10:27:57 AM Date and time completed: 11/7/2012 10:27:59 AM UserID: Profile ID: <<Unnamed Profile>> Total sheets: 1 Sheets plotted: 0 Number of errors: 1 Number of warnings: 0
I'am a quite expert Autocad user, but I have now a version wich seems to have some problem in plotting using Monochrome.ctb or Grayscale.ctb
If I choose one (It's the same problem with both), all the coloured layer in the layout visualization become black of course, but if I preview or I print it, the pdf created has all layer's colours.
of course the PLOT WITH PLOT STYLES box is checked.
I have attached a FDO image and created two different views in paperspace. One at 1:7500 and the other one at 1:2500. All is good until i want to plot the drawing. The native dwg objects are plotted right but the FDO image is plotted at the same scale in both mviews ?
I'm putting together an elevation where I want to be able to pdf the drawing in color but I'm having trouble getting the colors to plot. For instance I'm using color 37 and in the plot style table editor the color is set to 37, pen # is "automatic" and virtual pen # is "37". When I plot to a pdf that color doesn't even show on the plot. What am I missing here?
when i try to plot a layout or modelspace with a pdf xref'ed into it, to a new pdf, the resulting pdf is illegible - first off it becomes rasterized even though it's a vector document produced from word, and secondly it is extremely low quality. I have looked far and wide for settings that might work with this but I have come up empty -
We've got a file that's only plotting some layers and not others. All layers are on, thawed, and set to plot, so I don't have a clue why they aren't showing up. There's a plan that's x-reffed into model space and then showing through a viewport in paper space, and a title block x-reffed into paper space. Some layers in the plan and all layers in the title block are not plotting.
I've selected a .ctb (that i've used in the past on AutoCad2010) in the page set up, but when I try to plot the colors are still colors instead of black and the lineweights are printed as assigned....
I'm still fairly new at autoCAD and feel completely stumped. the "plot with plot styles" is checked... What am I missing?
I like using wipeouts in adding text over busy sections of plant layouts. When they are printed as an pdf on an A3 they usually print fine. If the pdf is printed as an A1 or A O then the wipeouts have like a solid hatch pattern over them. I would like to continue using wipeouts to add text over details on a drawing if possible.
Any new layers that I create show up fine on model space and paperspace, but do not show up when I try to plot or plot preview. Plotting is not disabled in the layer controls and the layers are not frozen.
I am still confused when it comes to My units and plotting to scale. If I want my drawing at 1/8" scale what would I set my units to and what would I set my scale to when plotting?
I have a drawing where I've xref'd (8)8.5x11 PDF'd documents using the PDF underlay option. The program runs fine, however something strange happens when I plot to PDF. For some reason ploted PDF file size becomes quite large (in this example, the (8) original sheets is roughly .6MB before I bring them into autoCAD LT and when I plot to full size pdf the pdf becomes ~25MB). Is this normal? Is there a way to reduce the file size? I should mention that the pdfs are almost completely text. I've tried 'breaking' the PDF into individual JPGs and bringing in the images into the sheet, but the file size is still huge. Is there a better way to bring in pdfs so that my ploted file size is more managable (I can deal with 1-3MB per sheet, but 25MB is, well, ridiculous).
I need to make several different plots of the same dwg and in one of them i need some hatching to not plot. I have the said hatching on a seperate layer. Is there anyways to tell autocad to not plot those particular layers for that particular plot. Is this managed by .ctb? Or something else. It must be able to be done ?
refer to attached screen shot . I've successfully linked 3 excel spread sheets that is inside 1 file into my autocad drawing. Everything looks fine, so i then save the file and closed it. When i open the drawing the 2 spread sheets turns white and unable to print, but the last one looks and prints fine.
i go to plot my dwg, with a OLE client Logo, i am plotting dwg to pdf, the plot preview shows the logo in colour, but the final output show the logo in black and white/mono.
driving me mad this one , other drawing plot to PDF fine with colour OLE logos, and have the same properties.
I figure many of you do as I do, drawing things to plot blueprints. It just so happens that I'm often sent PDFs of drawings to plot, but for some reason I have trouble with them.
Suppose I have a standard drawing that is meant for a 24x36 Arch D sheet size. It will always plot 36" because it has to, that is the paper width of the roll. But for some reason, it will stop shy of 24" and cut the paper as much as 4 or 6 inches short, instead of printing the full 24".
The drawing inside the PDF is exactly right, the Adobe Acrobat Reader shows the drawing fine, it fits within the margins, it's not scaled, the sheet size is shown accurately. Based on the visuals and settings, all things are great. I've got the paper set to 36" roll, opaque bond, no scaling because I need it to print accurately.
However, when it prints, some of the drawing is cut off at the bottom and at the top, and instead of 24" it cuts the paper at 18 or 20". I don't get it. It shows 24" in the print wizard, the correct paper size is shown, the preview images looks great. All things check OK, and then it prints and cuts off the graphic and makes a short sheet.
I'm afraid to try scale to 100% or scale to sheet size, because the people who have to use this need to scale it on paper with a ruler and I can't have it stretching or shrinking the print.
What gives with Acrobat printing? Need to plot PDFs accurately? It would be one thing to simply cut the sheet where the graphic ends, but this is actually stopping shy of printing the graphic altogether and cutting the sheet early before it reaches 24".
New AutoCAD user (LT 2013 on a mac). I want to plot (print, publish, etc.) my drawing on an ISO A1 size sheet, which is output on a 24 inch roll of paper at my local blueprint shop. I have been using SketchUp very successfully; I email a .pdf to the print shop and they print it with no issues.
I want a proper drawing with title block. I have exported to .pdf from AutoCAD model space and it works OK (not great), but this is not what I want.
- I don't have a large format printer at the office, and the one printer I do have isn't capable of larger than legal (8.5" x 14") - Do I need an A1 drawing template? If so, how/where do I find this? - Do I need to install a virtual .pdf plotter? I looked at Cute and I didn't see a mac OS version.
I have been trying to output a drawing from Autocad MAC 2011 to a PDF with lineweights however it only outputs the drawing with the different layer colors and I have assigned each layer a specific lineweight, I have tried making a plot style and I have tried printing in greyscale and I still cant figure it out. Any simple step by step process to plotting in lineweights!
