This has actually caused a delay in a few of our projects where we get a drawing or two in a fabrication set that are missing pages. At minimum it would be nice that the last pdf creation settings are retained as a default. I do not know that I agree with the negative thought that AutoDesk wants us to be frustrated with their software, but I do know that I can only do my submittal three ways in my industry, they are either .pdf or .dwg or paper and since it is against company police to send .dwg it leaves me with shipping 16 copies in papaer to the client or a single clean .pdf. If someone figures this out please let us know.
export pdf
export pdf multiple pages
export pdf defaults
There are many PDF creation applications out there (a quick search turned up dozens), from the expensive Adobe Acrobat to the free CutePDF. I use the former at work and the latter at home, and both work well, though "you get what you pay for" is true here to some extent: Acrobat offers much more flexibility and configurability than the free version of CutePDF.
All of these applications set up a "printer" that captures your print output as a PDF file, and that's all the free version of CutePDF does. Acrobat provides a significant suite of tools to create, edit, review and mark up PDF files, which is very useful at times. I'd recommend investing in one of these applications if Inventor's built-in tool isn't doing the job for you.
It is not that I can't print .pdf files. Inventor 2010 does a great job creating layered .pdf(s). I was going to write a macro, but for sake of time I have instead used my space pilot and customized one of the buttons to be "Print PDF" which is a custom command with the following keystrokes:
<Alt> F T P {Wait} {Wait} <Alt>+P {Wait} {Wait} <Down> <Down> <Enter>
WARNING: Before running the command make sure your cursor is in the lower right hand side of the screen becasue the mouse cursor will override the keystrokes when the "File" menu pops down.
Do not forget to use the wait otherwise it will crash inventor. Also, this is only for printing all pages and does not alter line weights or color, but you could easily add those in. If someone out there has got free time, by all means make us a macro and a pretty button.
Don't know why I didn't think of using the spacepilot before, hope this helps anyone who has a space pilot out.
Another problem is that italics fonts are changed to normal when exporting to pdf.
if Autodesk arent properly going to support PDFs, they should just remove the function and we all would print to PDF using a 3rd party programme.
Speaking of which, whats the best print to PDF tool for inventor?
I have also had trouble with the PDF "all sheets" option not being a default setting. I did a quick look and people already have macros to make default setting before saving as pdf in Inventor 2011.
The other problem is copying and pasting text into your drawing and then the PDF generation makes the text all squares.
The all squares are a result of a font choice. Either change your font or use a different program to create the .pdf files. We used to use the Lucida font all of the time, but we dropped it and moved over to Calibri.
I agree it seems to be the font, just seems a little unfair after 5 years of using the same font I have to change it now.
Hi guys an Inventor add-in I found you might be interested in: http://mgfx.co.za/nutsandbolts/?p=31
Cheers
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