Rendering all white on horizontal surfaces when printing

[SteveMSILLC]

Hello!

Fairly new to ACAD Arch here - but come from 15+ year background in CAD on the Mac.

I have a simple model of two desk units.  I also have a large rectangular area under them with a carpet texture applied.  The desks each have two textures/materials applied.  I am rendering to a viewport at 640x480, with shadows on and "high" quality.  I have 4 point light sources in the model.  When I render to viewport, it all looks great.  But when I plot or plot preview, all of the detail/textures/materials in the horizontal surfaces are gone and it plots as completely white in those areas and also shows it white in plot preview.

Any suggestions as to where I might look to see what I am doing wrong?

Attached are two images.  RENDER A is a screenshot of the correct image rendered on screen and RENDER B is a screenshot of the plot preview screen showing the white areas (which is also how it really prints).

[pendean]

Post the DWG file if you can.

[SteveMSILLC]

Here it is...

[thinkforyourself]

You cannot Plot or Plot Preview a Rendering in AutoCAD/ACA.  Renderings have to be rendered out to an image file type such as .jpg.  If you want to print a Rendering as part of CAD work, you will need to render to an image file type and then Attach the image as a Reference into the CAD drawing file.

I wouldn't render to the Viewport.  Better to Render to a Window and bump up the size.  Then, save out from the Window to whatever file format you prefer.  Use Photoshop or equivalent software to do last minute changes and to print from.

[SteveMSILLC]

I was able to preview and primt this successfully once by renedering to viewport and then printing last Friday.  But today I'm getting the white horizontal surfaces.  It is "plotting" to a color laser printer.  Why are just the horizontal surfaces suddenly not worlknig correctly?

I'd like to render to the viewport if possible and then print as that layout includes the viewport and our title block.  If I render to window and save as external file, I need to somehow get it back inside our titleblock and match the other drawings in the packet.

I will play with referencing the image file but am not at all familiar with this aspect of ACAD.

[thinkforyourself]

Okay, you kind of can print a Rendered Viewport but that technique has always produced horrible results for me and I gave up on that a long time ago.  Shaded Views seem to work better.

Just render the file as I described before and use a much higher pixel ratio.  In AutoCAD/ACA use the IM or XR command to access the Reference Palette and attach the image in Paper Space over your Titleblock.  Scale as needed and print like a regular drawing file.