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PDF batch plotting in background does not work - PLEASE HELP!!!!!

73 REPLIES 73
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Message 1 of 74
linnea.lukic
8002 Views, 73 Replies

PDF batch plotting in background does not work - PLEASE HELP!!!!!

Hi,

 

Don't know if anyone is having the same issue, batch plotting in the background used to work when we had AutoCAD Electrical 2013 installed on Windows XP 32-bit machine.  After haivng AE 2014 installed on Windows 7 64-bit OS and the background plotting has STOPPED working.  On right hand corner of the screen will stay "Job in Progress" for hours and nothing is printed.  Please see attached image.

 

As we don't have any spare stations to manage the PDF batch plotting (I'm talking about more than 200 sheet per project) therefore the background plotting is very important to us.

 

CAN ANY EXPERTS HERE PLEASE HELP???  The issue is drivng us crazy!!!!! Smiley Frustrated

 

Thank you!!

73 REPLIES 73
Message 41 of 74
DaisySunday
in reply to: linnea.lukic

No that's not what I mean, I never have the actual Vault program open unless I'm pulling something from the Mechanical side of the company, BUT my Vault logs in every time I open Electrical using a windows log in. Vault previously has caused my Electrical to crash so it wouldn't surprise me that the interaction between the two now is causing a stumbling block even though its highly unlikely. I just know that it seems everyone with this problem has this particular suite, not JUST ACADE which MIGHT be why Autodesk is having trouble reproducing the error-they're looking at ACADE as an individual program. I have the same design suite installed that you listed, I would take a guess that everyone with this problem has that design set installed on their machines. 

 

I guess my point in short is that Autodesk needs to look at the package as a whole instead of just checking the publish tool on ACADE 2014 by itself - this is most likely why the problem seems relatively limited to them because only those of us who use/install Vault & Inventor are having this issue.

Message 42 of 74
jim_gibson
in reply to: DaisySunday

I have only Electrical installed and not Vault and I can not do the background PDF's
Message 43 of 74
toddw.schuler
in reply to: Hm00b_Th0j

That may work while the Plot Project does not always work (at all) or when it does, the results are unexpected. 

 

When the Plot Project accessed from the Electrical Project Manager menu is activated, it gives the user no opportunity to modify page settings. The results can be much different than expected, whereas the page size may be 8-1/2 x11 vs 11x17 and the line weights are heavier than expected. 

 

Plot Project is what the ELectrical Engineers expect because that is what the Autodesk Authorized training center taught them. No matter what I tell them, they think that program should be the go-to, end-all way to get their project plotted to paper for the shop.

 

If Autodesk wants us to publish  everything to PDF and then print it from there, why are all the other commands more easily available to the user?

 

I have changed the page setup in files with no effect on the printing of the document.  (When I can get it to function at all).

 

 

Message 44 of 74

Hi toddw.schuler,

 

When try to batch plot to PDF, I've set up a blank drawing with all the correct setting we need then just do "import" so every page will plot identical, this is what you are referring?

 

I've given up on batch plot at the background now, I just simply leave my pc alone for 15 - 20 minutes and wait......  The other really annoying thing is that when batch plot "single-sheet PDF", very often it gives me the error message "plotting error found", so I will take a look at all the PDFs plotted and there is always ONE page did not plot.  But this error message did not tell me which page, so I have to open 2 windows explorers to compare between dwg and pdf to see which page did not get plotted, and sometimes even 2 pages did not plot!!!!

 

I don't know why Autodesk won't spend more time to investigate this plotting problem?  I am seriously thinking about looking at other CAD software.

 

Message 45 of 74
rjfliegel
in reply to: linnea.lukic

I had the same problem.  It just so happened that the day it began, I had switched the settings under the "STARTUP" command from <0> to <2>.  When it is set to <2>, background plotting doesn't work and will lag at "Job in Progress" indefinitely.  As soon as it's switched back to <0>, it works perfectly.  Maybe this will solve your problem

Message 46 of 74
Hm00b_Th0j
in reply to: DaisySunday

Just check. Never change that.  Always zero ("0") that was default.  Not the cause.  It's something else.

Message 47 of 74
cmanzo
in reply to: mathalekar

I'm having a similar problem. I recently installed AutoCAD14 about a month ago. At first I could plot single drawings in background no problem. I first noticed problem when I tried to create a pdf file of several drawings. I selected batch plot under print & selected pdf file but pdf file was never created. Then on another day when I created a batch plot to print drawings to a printer 'Print in progress' just continued all day but no prints.

 

Then I could not print anything until today when I unselected 'plot in background' box. But I'd like to keep or get my 'plot in background' feature back and working. 

Message 48 of 74
linnea.lukic
in reply to: cmanzo

Hi Cmanzo,

 

I would love the "background plotting" to work again, as it is very important to me because most of time I have to plot projects which have more than 200 pages each and I don't want my print job to stop me working on CAD.

 

Someone did suggested to open another AECAD appplication so you could work at the same time but I don't think this is the solution, I think Autodesk should fix this problem, don't you? Smiley Mad

Message 49 of 74
DaisySunday
in reply to: linnea.lukic

Our IT is willing to go ahead and switch us to ACADE 2015 in hopes that this glitch is corrected there - has anybody tried that yet? I know it JUST came out, but there have to be other companies like ours that have the yearly upgrade package that get these notifications and upgrades as soon as the new product comes out. We're hesitant to upgrade since it seems like we JUST got 2014 installed and settled, but this issue is REALLY ANNOYING.

Message 50 of 74

Backgrounf plotting of PDFs has worked for me but they take a long time to generate.  It seems faster with version 2015, plus 2015 creates hyperlinked PFDs so you can "surf" relays and between schematic symbol and footprint.



Doug McAlexander


Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support

Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available

Phone: (770) 841-8009

www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623




Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Message 51 of 74

Thanks Doug that's very encouraging! Let me make sure I'm understanding you (because if I am it could be very useful to us) the "surf" feature now links into a PDF project set? So if I publish my entire project to PDF (which I do regularly) my boss can then surf between the pages of that PDF to find parent/child components? That would be pretty freaking cool and worth the update by itself even if my background publish still refuses to cooperate!

Message 52 of 74

I just timed it.  It took 4 minutes to publish the attached multisheet PDF file of a project that contains 16 drawings.  This is the project that I have my students create when I teach AutoCAD Electrical for IEC. Open the PDF with Adobe Acrobat and click on a relay tag or click on the location portion of a crossreference.  This project uses table style cross-referencing so click the location text in the righthand box for each contact to hyperink to it.  There is a slash in this box, which precedes the sheet number.  This is what you click on.  From the panel side you will click the actual footprint.  Just look for the browser hand symbol. When you see the hand symbol, it means the symbol or reference has a hyperlink.  Click when you see the hand to surf.  You can surf signal arrows as well.  Just click their cross-reference text.

 

Hint: You can just click the attached PDF from Google Chrome browser and the hyperlinks work the same.  You don't have to use Adobe Acrobat.



Doug McAlexander


Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support

Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available

Phone: (770) 841-8009

www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623




Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Message 53 of 74

Doug that is too cool! Thanks for the example! I think we'll look more seriously at upgrading now because I don't think any of us felt like it after that last one.

Message 54 of 74
linnea.lukic
in reply to: DaisySunday

I should give 2015 a try and see if the background plotting works!!

Message 55 of 74
testsubject
in reply to: DaisySunday

I just tried PDFing theWDDEMO project in ACE 2015 and got the following erro message:

 

error.png

 

Looks like it is still not fixed...



Bob Hanrahan
Ace User since 1998
If this answered your question, please click on "Accept Solution"
Message 56 of 74

Bob you must have something else going on. It is working flawlessly for me. Publishing in background is working just fine. The IEC project demo PDF that I posted previously was published in the background using 2015, and it includes hyperlinks. The WDDEMO project works as well. Pat used it to create the video tutorial in 2015.  I wonder if it might be an issue with your graphics card.  It's a longshot but try turning off hardware accelleration.  Also make sure you are not running in SDI mode.  Be sure SDI is set to "0" (zero).



Doug McAlexander


Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support

Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available

Phone: (770) 841-8009

www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623




Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Message 57 of 74
DaisySunday
in reply to: testsubject

LOL WELL AT LEAST THEY HAD THE DECENCY TO PUT A DARNED ERROR MESSAGE IN THIS ROUND! The 2014 just loops eternally, so now they are at least admitting they have a problem - that's the first step to fixing it. Of course you'd think that if they can code to generate that error message they could tell what was causing it to trip. 

 

Doug - You said you never had the eternal background pdf publish issue in the first place though, it seems to be a hit or miss bug for some reason. At one point they were linking it to the profiles being used. We did away with our profiles and re-installed the software and still had the same problem in 2014, but my 2013 is fine...so if Bob is getting this error message it likely means that I will continue to get it as well. 

 

We will still probably upgrade just because the PDF surf function would be HUGELY useful around here and it also is looking like its going to help out with my transition in Inventor for electrical assemblies as well. 

 

Thanks guys!

Message 58 of 74
cmanzo
in reply to: DaisySunday

I'd still like to have my 'plot in background' feature without having to upgrade to 2015 or debug AutoCAD 2014 issues for AutoCAD. 

Message 59 of 74

To clarify, I have seen publish in backgroud take a loooong time in previous versions, but it eventually worked.  With version 2015 it is very much improved, plus it natively produces a PDF that can be surfed.  And yes, the publish in background is considerably faster than with 2014 or any previous versions.



Doug McAlexander


Design Engineer/Consultant/Instructor/Mentor specializing in AutoCAD Electrical training and implementation support

Phone and Web-based Support Plans Available

Phone: (770) 841-8009

www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcalexander-1a77623




Please Accept as Solution if I helped you. Likes are also much appreciated.
Message 60 of 74
haiqing
in reply to: testsubject

Hi Bob,

 

I am sorry to hear that you still have problem with the background publish in new ACADE 2015. May I check with you if you have changed any settings after you installed ACADE 2015? Also, any other products have you installed in the machine installed with ACADE 2015?

 

If you have done many changes in the settings, do you mind to send me (@haiqing.wang@autodesk.com) your profile in ACADE 2015 using below steps:

  1. On AutoCAD Electrical, type “OPTIONS” command to bring up Options dialog
  2. Go to “Profiles” tab.
  3. Click “Export” to save the current profile (highlighted profile) to an arg file


Haiqing Wang
AutoCAD Electrical Team

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