Plotting to pdf with shadows and no face style.

[Anonymous]

I am creating a 3D model and have my selected view within a viewport on layout space.

My prefered visual style for the model is with no face style (i.e only isolines visible) with full shadows on. This looks perfect on layout space.

When plotting to pdf - it looks nothing like as shown despite setting the viewport shade style to as displayed or the selected visual style and the shadows don;t show.

As the pdf option is not providing the desired output. Is there something I am doing wrong or is there a way to render the model whilst showing no face style/material?

I welcome any comments you may have.

[pendean]

Which PDF driver are you using?
Can you post a sample DWG file too?

[Anonymous]

I have tried both dwg to pdf and pdf995.

The CAD file is incredibally large but I will try and get some screenshots uploaded later today.

[pendean]

You don't need to post your actual file: simply recreate the conditions (and issue) in a new file ith a few objects, confirm the PDF output from it is flawed, then post these two here.

[Anonymous]

Please find attached CAD file and images of viewports and pdfs of actual plots

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

my result (using AutoCAD 2012) is the attached one. The only thing I did was to PAN within the viewport as the model was quite small after opening your file) and disabling the CTB-usage (you have set it to greyscale, but this should not make a difference).

At least I see no error in the PDF, is there anything you see as problem in it?

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your response - I get the same outcome when plotting the extract - perhaps it is a memory issue with regards to the full cad file i.e. acutal and wanted files previously attached.

However, the shadows are still not present.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> However, the shadows are still not present.

Oops, have not looked after that, sorry!

And more difficult now: I tried it with your drawing and I have not found a way to get the shadows (for visual style hidden) plotted.

What I tried: I copied your objects (modelspace-entities) into a new drawing, then created a layout and all is good, shadows are plotted then. However when I active a CTB (like you had greyscale.ctb) the shadows are on display, but not visible in plot-preview.

More bad: changing the CTB back to none does not give me the shadows back, it seems now to have the shadow-plotting disabled forever ... at least I have not found a way to get them back.

So what I would recommand is to not activate a CTB, then you get your shadows plotted. If you need the colors set to grey-values then do that by VP-Layer-overrides. Just a workaround, not perfect at all.

HTH, - alfred -

[Anonymous]

Thank you, I will try that tonight upon my return from work.

Do you think it would be a memory problem when plotting the full file as to why it only plots a third of the lines?

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> Do you think it would be a memory problem when plotting the full file as to why it only plots a third of the lines?

What operating system do you have? Are you working on 64bit or not? Have you tried e.g. to plot to DWF insteadd of PDF to verify the case with another driver?

Maybe also in that case a copy&paste of the model-entities to a new drawing is a help.

At least I can give tips so you can do some tests, as long as I don't have your drawing I can't do anything more than guessing.

With 32bit it might be a problem, yes.

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

I am on windows 7 64 bit.

I will try and upload the file this evening as I would very much welcome any help you could provide.