Autocad 2013 LT- Print Quality is poor

[payneardo]

Hi, hoping somebody can assist.  We have moved a client from an early version of Autocad for windows to Autocad LT 2013 for Mac and the print quality is not as good as it was from windows.  We are going to test Service pack 2 beta to see if it helps but does anybody else have any tips we can try ???

Many Thanks

Dave

[maxim_k]

Welcome to the Autodesk Forums!

Hi Dave,

Could you clarify "print quality is not as good as it was from windows"?

What exactly do you mean?

Yes, there are some troubles in printing from AutoCAD on Mac, some of them could be avoided with some tricks, some could not be resolved, but I need to know what exactly do you mean to answer your question.

Maxim

[payneardo]

Hi, thanks for replying 

It is the close detail of the print, the lines are jagged and the text is a bit fuzzy.  We have just installed SP2 to see if this solves the issue but it still seems to be an issue.

We have compared a drawing done in a previous version of autocad on windows and the print quality on there seems fine with the same printer.

Many Thanks

Dave

[maxim_k]

Hi Dave,

Do you mean direct printing (to physical device)?
Which model of printer do you have?
What about drivers for this printer?
What if you save PDF file using your printer driver? Do you see the same issue?
Have you tried to install Gutenprint drivers (please search this Forum for installation instructions)?
What results do you get with Gutenprint (save to PDF)? Are they the same?

Maxim

[payneardo]

Thanks again for your reply, we will look at the Gutenprint drivers 

but plpease find an answer to other questions, many Thanks

Do you mean direct printing (to physical device)?

Direct print from auto cad, the quality issue is not there from other apps

Which model of printer do you have? 

HP Designjet 510

What about drivers for this printer? 

Designjet 510 24inch drivers

What if you save PDF file using your printer driver? Do you see the same issue?

If we save to PDF the print quality is slighlty worse 

Many Thanks

Dave

[maxim_k]

---

payneardo wrote:

...

Which model of printer do you have? 

HP Designjet 510

What about drivers for this printer? 

Designjet 510 24inch drivers

...

---

Hi Dave,

DesignJet 510 printer software for Mac OS is the same as for DesignJet 500 (and both plotters are almost identical), so please look at these links:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-for-Mac/HP-Designjet-500-print-quality-issues/m-p/3499864/high...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-for-Mac/AutoCAD-2012-for-Mac-Printing-quality/m-p/3190414/high...

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-for-Mac/drawings-plotting-hazy-from-autocad-to-plotter-works-f...

Could you post here one of your files? I can test PDF output with both drivers - from HP and Gutenprint, as I heve them installed. (You can also send the file to my email: mkanaev at yandex.ru)

Maxim

[wei503]

Can you please try with SP2? We do have some improvement in some situation in this update. The beta version of SP2 is available at 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-for-Mac/AutoCAD-2013-for-Mac-SP2-Beta-is-available/td-p/455998...

[pravirsethi]

Dear Maxim

AM using AutoCAD 2014 for Mac and facing the same problem. I have a jpg file produced at 1300x1000 pixels using 3ds Max that seems to print ok when I print the jpg directly. However when I attach the jpg to my presentation dwg in AutoCAd and generate a PDF to send to the print shop, the image quality is poor (pixelated). This is noticeable both on-screen between the PDF and the jpg seen at the same zoom, and also noticeable on the print. I have tried generating the image at 2200pixels, and it is somewhat better but still not ideal. Also this greatly increases my render time. Is there an AutoCAD setting I can change for raster or PDF output quality? Shall I try installing the Gutenprint driver? I attach here the packaged zip file including the original jpg.

ANy help much appreciated.

PS

[maxim_k]

Welcome to Autodesk Forums!

Hi,
I'll look at your raster image little bit later, because for now I'm out of my Mac.
Just have an additional questions:
Which printer software you are using now?
Do you scale the image after you attach it to the drawing?

Maxim

[pravirsethi]

Just used the generic "Save as  PDF" that comes with Mac. Or I just click on "preview" and then it opens in Acrobat Professional where I then save it as PDF. And yes I did scale it. Think the scale factor is 1300(!) Does this matter? Have done this before with decent results.

Attached is the file with the scaled and unscaled image in it, and PDFs produced from both these. Both PDFs look very pixelated when viewed at 100%.

Please advise.

[maxim_k]

The scale doesn't matter I think, but image data itself - does.

The image you are trying to print from AutoCAD has very small dimensions: 3.71x2.85 cm, or 1.46x1.12 inches and it has resolution 890 dpi. At the same time when I try to reduce resolution without resampling image in Photoshop the actual dimensions of the image remains an I still get poor quality of PDF output in AutoCAD.

It seems you need to fine-tune image output in 3ds Max.

What I have done to improve image quality output:

- edited your image in Photoshop and increased it's size (resample) to 37.00x28.46 cm, or 14.57x11.21 inches and got 13 mb file size.

- attached tis file to your drawing, scaled it (yas, I still need to scale it up 1100 times)

- saved to PDF from Print dialog and got 19 Mb PDF with good image quality

- than I saved resulting PDF again in Preview.app, but now I reduced raster image quality with Quartz Filter to 150 dpi and got smaller PDF file which I attached here.

Here you can find Quartz Filters:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4975061

Maxim

[pravirsethi]

Hi, and thanks for that quick response.

Downloaded the filters, and have tried what you suggested, and it works, just seems a kind of long winded approach (increasing the jpg file size, then reducing the PDF size etc) it. Is there a shorter way to do this? You mentioned tweaking the output settings in 3ds Max. Could we eliminate the above steps if that is done? And if so, do you know how? My 3d guy's solution is to increase the dpi or the pixel size, both of which will increase render time quite a bit...

[maxim_k]

Yes, quality images in 3D software such as 3ds Max takes a long time to render, that is true, especially if you want to prepare them for printing. You need at least 300 dpi resolution with image dimensions near the values you want to have on the paper. Of course this is not the same as you need in order to look at them on display (which has 72 dpi or 144 dpi if you have 4K (retina) display).
So you need to find balance here between rendering time and image quality you need. I think you can try to increase image dimensions in 3ds Max instead of increasing resolution (dpi).

Maxim

[pravirsethi]

Hey thanks again Maxim. Been doing some further research into this and am finding that the default "Save to PDF" option in Mac is producing pretty poor output even with respect to crispness and colour of line drawings (no renders or jpgs involved here). I even tried "Save as Adobe PDF" with setting on High Quality Print. The result was poor, compared to what I produced from the same file using "DWG to PDF" on a Windows machine. See attached results. This is pretty alarming since we work on Macs in my studio. There must be a way to get a decent PDF output on a Mac? What about those Gutenprint drivers? Would they help.

[maxim_k]

Hi,

If you can post your test DWG file here or send it to my e-mail:
mkanaev at yandex.ru
I can test it with Guenprint driver on my Mac.

Maxim

[maxim_k]

BTW:

Just opened your files in Preview.app on Mac and ... they seems to me the identical quality

Mac vesion:

Win version:

What do you mean by "The result was poor, compared to what I produced from the same file using "DWG to PDF" on a Windows machine."?

Maxim

[pravirsethi]

Hi Maxim

You're right, when opening in Preview they both lose their crispness. Also most of the people I send this to work on Windows PCs and so would open the file using Acrobat reader. Attached are screen shots of the two files (created by Mac and Windows AutoCAD) when opened in Acrobat. You can see the huge difference in the lineweight and quality  - the Windows one is much crisper! This is pretty important to me. As requested, I have also packaged and attached the original CAD file from which the PDFs were generated. One sheet shows a drawing, and the other a render (same one with which we had quality issues earlier after PDF creation - the jpg itself prints fine separately)

[maxim_k]

Hi,
I'll look at your DWG, but have to say for now:
it seems PDF files you attached in your initial post are both from Windows version of AutoCAD, because they both contains Layers information - that is why they looked identical when I opened them on my machine.

Maxim

[maxim_k]

OK,

I can confirm that in Acrobat Reader (including Mac version) PDF file created in AC for Mac looks differently than PDF from Windows side - everything seems thicker. But this occurs only if you look at the whole PDF file with small zoom percentage, but if you start to zoom in the PDF the files became almost identical.
I can not say why Acrobat Reader shows PDF files in different way than Preview app on Mac.
I tested PDF output with Gutenprint drivers on Mac and attached the resulting PDF here - you can compare the results with yours and decide which is better.

maxim

[pravirsethi]

Just used the generic "convert to PDF" that comes with Mac. Usually I just click on "preview" and then it opens in Acrobat Professional where I then save it as PDF.

And yes I did scale it. Think the scale factor is 1300(!) Does this matter? Have done this before with decent results.

Sent from my iPhone