DWF and Printing - More issues

[zaklee]

I'm having a frustrating run of things. Here's the deal:

I first started using Revit Building 8 and created DWF files by printing to the DWF Writer that was included with that Revit release. It was installed separately and things seemed to work fine.

Then I upgraded to Revit Building 8.1. The DWF Writer no longer came with it and the export function didn't work for 2D drawings. So, I installed the writer from the 8.0 CD. This seemed to work fine.

Now I'm using Revit Building 9 and the export to 2D DWF feature is fully functional. The DWF files that I create using it look just like the ought to. When I print the DWF to a physical printer here in the office (no matter which one and they're all different) everything prints correctly.

So why am I frustrated? Because if I send the file to my reprographer (is that a word?), some of the text, but not all, gets messed up. Also, section, elevation and callout tag heads and tails are dropped out of the print. Finally, the section lines appear to be lighter than usual.

As a work around, the reprographer asked me to print to PDF instead. I thought, "I have the latest and greatest Adobe Acrobat Pro and Distiller, so that shouldn't be a big deal". Well, the text is fine but the tag heads and tails still drop out - and that's in the PDF so I didn't bother sending it to the print house.

Now here's the thing. I installed the old DWF Writer from the v. 8 CD. If I print the Revit file to that "printer" instead of using the native export function, all of these problems are again resolved. This suggests to me that the problem is with the DWF file as a result of the new export function. I know there are threads related to DWF and the Oce Reprographics system, but they don't address the similar problems when printing to PDF. They don't specifically address these other problems either.

Can anyone shed any light?

[Anonymous]

http://dwf.blogs.com/beyond_the_paper/2006/04/now_that_more_a.html

I had an article for avoiding font woes with AutoCAD and Inventor. I need to
do one for Revit.

wrote in message news:5249227@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm having a frustrating run of things. Here's the deal:

I first started using Revit Building 8 and created DWF files by printing to
the DWF Writer that was included with that Revit release. It was installed
separately and things seemed to work fine.

Then I upgraded to Revit Building 8.1. The DWF Writer no longer came with it
and the export function didn't work for 2D drawings. So, I installed the
writer from the 8.0 CD. This seemed to work fine.

Now I'm using Revit Building 9 and the export to 2D DWF feature is fully
functional. The DWF files that I create using it look just like the ought
to. When I print the DWF to a physical printer here in the office (no matter
which one and they're all different) everything prints correctly.

So why am I frustrated? Because if I send the file to my reprographer (is
that a word?), some of the text, but not all, gets messed up. Also, section,
elevation and callout tag heads and tails are dropped out of the print.
Finally, the section lines appear to be lighter than usual.

As a work around, the reprographer asked me to print to PDF instead. I
thought, "I have the latest and greatest Adobe Acrobat Pro and Distiller, so
that shouldn't be a big deal". Well, the text is fine but the tag heads and
tails still drop out - and that's in the PDF so I didn't bother sending it
to the print house.

Now here's the thing. I installed the old DWF Writer from the v. 8 CD. If I
print the Revit file to that "printer" instead of using the native export
function, all of these problems are again resolved. This suggests to me that
the problem is with the DWF file as a result of the new export function. I
know there are threads related to DWF and the Oce Reprographics system, but
they don't address the similar problems when printing to PDF. They don't
specifically address these other problems either.

Can anyone shed any light?

[zaklee]

Thanks Scott. I actually read that article before posting my long-winded lamentation.

My reprographer updated their Oce software just this afternoon. That corrected the font issue. But the problem with the section, elevation and call out tags persists. The only solution that I have found is to use the older Autodesk DWF Writer installed from the Revit 8 disc.

In fact, that's what I just did. That DWF file displays just the same as the exported one and now prints correctly to PDF and converts correctly for the Oce plotters with whatever software those guys are using.

[Anonymous]

The problem is in the way that Revit is processing the fonts for the DWF
files does not appear to be compatible with the way that the DWF Viewer and
toolkits work with the fonts. In other words the right hand isn't talking
to the left over at Autodesk.

For the short term I think you have to turn off the font embedding in the
driver and make sure they have the same fonts you use. If you stick to the
common Windows fonts it shoudn't be a problem.
http://www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html

Essentially fonts in the DWF are embedded on a page by page basis with just
the subset of the used letters embedded. That means if you have 20 pages
that you are going to have 20 different font subsets for say just the Arial
font. Now of those subsets most are probably going to contain 90% of the
same data. Not every page may use the letter Z or stuff like that.

Now I've always thought this to be a huge problem because it bloats the file
size. But more importantly is that you now have 20 different font files
where something could go wrong in one DWF.

Now for some reason the Revit team has made things even worse and they may
embed 3 or 4 partital font files of the same font per page. Now when this
happens it appears the DWF Viewer is only looking at the first one it finds
for the page so that one may contain letters like ADEFGHIJ but all of a
sudden the text it's trying to write needs the letter B but that font is
defined in the second or third embedded file for the page which the viewer
doesn't find.

Now fonts are a major pain in the rear no matter how you look at it so I'll
give them some credit on that. There are no solid rules in Windows as how
to name a font and I personally spent most of last week trying to figure out
how to decipher embedded font names in PDF to match up to thw Windows font
names. It's rediculous to say the least.

All of this could be resolved if they would have taken my suggestion years
ago that fonts are stored in a central area in the DWF file and when pages
are merged together the subsets are merged. I know it's no easy task but
we've been able to do it on the PDF side of things and it greatly reduces
the file size for multiple page files. It's also obvious that at one time
they were doing it properly in the Revit DWF Writer so hopefully they will
patch the writer soon or even better yet patch the viewer to work with
multiple subsets on the same page.


--
Rodney McManamy
President
CADzation
-------------------------
rmcmanamy@cadzation.com
-------------------------
518 South Route 31 Suite 200
McHenry, IL 60050
http://www.cadzation.com
Providing Industrial Strength
PDF & DWF Solutions to the
Global CAD Marketplace.

wrote in message news:5249465@discussion.autodesk.com...
Thanks Scott. I actually read that article before posting my long-winded
lamentation.

My reprographer updated their Oce software just this afternoon. That
corrected the font issue. But the problem with the section, elevation and
call out tags persists. The only solution that I have found is to use the
older Autodesk DWF Writer installed from the Revit 8 disc.

In fact, that's what I just did. That DWF file displays just the same as the
exported one and now prints correctly to PDF and converts correctly for the
Oce plotters with whatever software those guys are using.

[zaklee]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. As I noted, there is no longer a problem with the fonts. They are printing just fine since the reprographer update their version of Oce Publisher. I never had a font problem in house.

The current issue is with the annotation heads dropping out. By that, I don't mean that the alone text drops out. I mean that the whole head graphic (filled arrow, bubble, text) and the sections tails don't print. The only thing that does print is the section line or callout region boundary. Where the head/tail was there is a masked region on the hard copy with no line boundary.

This issue has now been forwarded to the support team. They have duplicated the problem, so hopefully they will come up with a solution.

[Anonymous]

The Océ client tools use a rendering API from Autodesk. This tool had a bug
that causes this exact problem. I say had because the bug in the Autodesk
software has been fixed for a few months now. It is just a matter of Océ
client tools incorporating this fix.



Ben Cochran

Autodesk



wrote in message news:5256111@discussion.autodesk.com...
Thanks for taking the time to reply. As I noted, there is no longer a
problem with the fonts. They are printing just fine since the reprographer
update their version of Oce Publisher. I never had a font problem in house.

The current issue is with the annotation heads dropping out. By that, I
don't mean that the alone text drops out. I mean that the whole head graphic
(filled arrow, bubble, text) and the sections tails don't print. The only
thing that does print is the section line or callout region boundary. Where
the head/tail was there is a masked region on the hard copy with no line
boundary.

This issue has now been forwarded to the support team. They have duplicated
the problem, so hopefully they will come up with a solution.

[zaklee]

Then Adobe has the same problem with the Autodesk API?

As previously noted, the same annotation heads/tails drop out when printing to Adobe PDF. I'm using the latest and greatest from Adobe and Autodesk.