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PDF Underlay prints grey

19 REPLIES 19
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Message 1 of 20
usu2002
10350 Views, 19 Replies

PDF Underlay prints grey

I have recently upgraded to Civil 3D 2012.  I am using some drawings that I created in 2011.  In those drawings, I have attached some PDF's.  With 2011, the PDF's printed as expected.  Now, in 2012, the PDF's print greyed back.  I assume it is simply a setting in Autocad and I don't know what that setting is.  The fade for the PDF's is zero and the layer is not set to print transparent.  Your help is much appreciated.

19 REPLIES 19
Message 2 of 20
natureforms
in reply to: usu2002

I have had this problem as well once I upgraded to 2012.  

 

I just sucessfully printed a PDF underlay that did not result in a greyed out underlay.  

 

To accomplish this I did the following:

 

Command:  ADJUST or PDFADJUST

Select PDF Underlay

Enter PDF Underlay Option [ Fade/Contrast/Monochrome]:   SELECT CONTRAST

Enter contrst value:  ENTER 100 ( MINE WAS ON 75)

 

After doing the above , the PDF was not greyed out anymore.  I never had the problem when printing to a physical plotter, but only when printing to a PDF; however this fixed the problem.

 

Message 3 of 20
usu2002
in reply to: natureforms

That's great.  Thank you very much!

Message 4 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: usu2002

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I am having the same problem and the fix mentioned above isn't working.  I have a long multipage PDF inserted with the pdfattach command.  It prints fine to our in-house printer, but exporting to PDF results in faint grey text.  PDFADJUST/contrast (and fade) make no difference.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  TIA.

Message 5 of 20
Alfred.NESWADBA
in reply to: PDSF

Hi,

 

>> but exporting to PDF results in faint grey text

Really PDF-export (1) or did you use the PLOT-command (2).

If 1) ... try 2)

if 2) ... what driver/PC3 did you use?

 

- alfred -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alfred NESWADBA
Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS ... www.hollaus.at ... blog.hollaus.at ... CDay 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(not an Autodesk consultant)
Message 6 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: Alfred.NESWADBA

Really PDF Export.  I always create PDFs this way or with the Publish command.  We need to be able to publish all sheets at one time.  Printing to the "Adobe PDF" printer is extremely slow and results in a blank output (this problem exists with all files, not just this one).  There is no .pc3 file involved.

Message 7 of 20
Alfred.NESWADBA
in reply to: PDSF

Hi,

 

>> Printing to the "Adobe PDF" printer is extremely slow

Why do you use Adobe to get the files written in PDF-format? Why don't you try the "DWG to PDF.PC3" for plotting? Try it and let us know if the referenced PDF is then visible in color.

 

BTW: when you do _PUBLISH, do you also get then the greyed embeded PDF as a result?

 

- alfred -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alfred NESWADBA
Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS ... www.hollaus.at ... blog.hollaus.at ... CDay 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(not an Autodesk consultant)
Message 8 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: Alfred.NESWADBA

Results are as follows:

 

Printing to DWGtoPDF.pc3 prints fairly quickly but with faded output.

Printing to "Adobe PDF" printer usually hangs and crashes, if it doesn't hang and crash it produces null output.

Publishing or exporting to PDF both produce faded output.

 

I would attach an example, but this forum has a ridiculously small attachment size limit.

Message 9 of 20
Alfred.NESWADBA
in reply to: PDSF

Hi,

 

>> I would attach an example, but this forum has a ridiculously small attachment size limit.

If you create a new drawing with just one PDF referenced, and you prepare the PDF to has just one side, you won't come down to 1.5MB (zipped)? Of course, the problem should be reproducable with this "mini-sample" 😉

 

- alfred -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alfred NESWADBA
Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS ... www.hollaus.at ... blog.hollaus.at ... CDay 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(not an Autodesk consultant)
Message 10 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: PDSF

PS, the problem is not lack of color.  The problem is black text printing as very faded grey, unreadable and unprintable.  The PDF originated as a Word document, and I would be happy to attach it as an OLE object but you can't attach multipage Word files in Autocad.

Message 11 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: PDSF

OK, here's a sample of just one page.

Message 12 of 20
Alfred.NESWADBA
in reply to: PDSF

Hi,

 

is that the resulting PDF you get after exporting the DWG to PDF or should I use this to reference it into one of my drawings and to output it as new PDF? If second then the problem of "your grey text" is that the source text (upper left text) already is grey.

 

- alfred -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alfred NESWADBA
Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS ... www.hollaus.at ... blog.hollaus.at ... CDay 2024
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(not an Autodesk consultant)
Message 13 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: Alfred.NESWADBA

Alfred,

 

I appreciate your trying to help, but after a question like that I don't think there's any point in our continuing with this discussion.  Anyone else out there with any insight into this?

Message 14 of 20
natureforms
in reply to: PDSF

My earlier solution that worked for me once, failed to work several weeks later.  I dont' always have the grayed out problem, but when it occurs, I save the PDF as a PNG (or other image format) and insert it as an image.  

 

It is not a solution to the problem, but a way to avoid the problem until an easier solution arises.

Message 15 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: natureforms

Yes natureforms, doing it as an image is sure to work and I may have to go that way.  It's just that it's about a thousand times more time efficient to reference PDFs because you can reference all of its pages at a time, rather than referencing 20 JPG's individually.  I just feel like there is a missing link here, if you'll pardon the pun.  PDFs are ubiquitous nowadays and I feel like people are successfully using them.  Thanks for your input.

Message 16 of 20
usu2002
in reply to: PDSF

I have run into this problem again.  This time the PDFADJUST didn't work for me.  I messed around with a few plot settings and discovered that when I turn off "Plot Transparency" in the plot dialog box, the PDF's print normal.  I hope that helps any of you with that problem.

Message 17 of 20
PDSF
in reply to: usu2002

That is great information usu2002, thanks!  That worked for me as long as I went through the print dialog.  Printing to PDF seems to be working now--although it is still very slow, at least it does not crash or hang.

 

Next question, does anyone know how to get the PDF export routine (which is used by the Publish function and is about twenty times faster than printing to PDF) to ignore the transparency setting?  Thanks everyone for your contributions.

Message 18 of 20
idmadcadder
in reply to: PDSF

I've also confirmed that plotting with transparency on creates a faded back pdf underlay.  Unfortenatly when both are existing in a set and I am plotting the whole set through the SSM this creates a serious issue.  Is there any new insight into this issue?

Civil 3D 2016 SP1
Windows 10 x64
Core i7 3.40 GHz 8gb RAM
Message 19 of 20
Gdubs
in reply to: PDSF

I was having the same problem, under pdfadjust i changed it to monochrome on and my grayed out pdf problem went away. 

Message 20 of 20
bradyhed
in reply to: Gdubs

I was having a similar problem with a PDF underlay.  It was printing too dark, so I couldnt see my text well.  After trying the things on this thread, like adjusting the Fade/Contrast, I found what i needed.  Inside the viewport, I went to the Layer Property Manager.  There's a column called VP Transparency, which was set to 0.  I increased this value, and it finally made the image Plot to PDF lighter.  Hope this helps someone.

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