Inventor to PDF export issue. . .

[wwoehlke]

OK, I have been using this technique for over a year, several times a day, with the same software, never had this happen, and searched around a lot and it doesn't look like this is happening to anyone else either. I use Inventor Pro 2012, make an ipt. , make an idw. , then Export > To PDF and I use Nitro Pro 8 for my PDF's. Always works perfectly, Nitro allows some editing and options you can't get from Adobe, I like it. Until today. . . I followed this same procedure after making some revisions to a print. Export > To PDF > Overwrite Existing File. Nothing new there, I have done this thousands of times. Today, however, when the PDF window opened all my dimensions and text had just gone crazy, they deleted several characters, seemingly at random from everything. It's only letters and numbers, too. Not symbols, which I could expect if there was a font issue or something like what I've been reading about on here. The diameter and depth symbols are there, but, for example, there's a note that on the print reads "GREASE GROOVES Ø.25 (depth sym.)1/32" (D)". After conversion it reads "   A          Ø 2  (depth sym.) 1 32" (D)". I've gone through various settings and tried changing the way that Nitro converts text, and it never changes. When I go through the Print dialog and select Nitro, I get the same thing, except there's additional characters and symbols replaced by those rectangles of blank font. When I print straight from Inventor it works fine, when I preview the PDF export through Inventor it looks fine. Other files convert fine. It's just this one drawing that seems to be doing this. My views and graphics all come across normal and everything in my title block is OK, it seems like its just a random selection of characters that it doesn't want to carry over. I have spent way too much time on it already, and am wondering if anyone has seen anything like this before or has any suggestions I haven't already tried. I'll attach the PDF as it comes across, and the Inventor Drawing file for comparison. Thanks in advance.

[bob_holland]

I woudl have you reboot and retry.

I have attached a PDF of your IDW.

Please get back to us after you have rebooted and retested.

Have a great weekend.

[wwoehlke]

Yeah, yours came out without any numbers or words at all, thats even worse! I suppose I could print it like that, write in all the dimensions as they should be and then scan it back into PDF, but that seems kinda ridiculous when I have all this software that should be able to handle this.I rebooted shortly after I first posted here and tried again, and got the exact same result. I moved on to another project and made a PDF from another file, and it worked perfectly, no errors whatsoever. Is it possible that file has been corrupted in some way and its dimensions are just not recognizable anymore? And if that's the case, why would the preview not show any problem? Hmmm..... I might have to do some head scratchin on this over the weekend.

[bob_holland]

I have attached a screen capture of what I see from Adobe.

I expect that your issue is with Acrobat.

[lkellyharley]

Was this issue ever resolved? I have a similar issue with a NON-Adobe PDF converter. My issue is with a table like a BOM, all the items within colums are not aligned.

[wwoehlke]

No it really never was resolved. I performed the exact same operation on other files and had no problems, it just seems to be that one file. I exported the file to another machine with the same software and tried it and it worked fine, so I am assuming there was some sort of glitch in the initial conversion that corrupted the path of that particular file and the way it is read by the other software. Everything else is going fine now. so I have moved on from it, without ever really knowing exactly what happened. Oh well, that's what you get with technology. Sometimes it just has a mind of its own and does what it wants to. @Ikellyharley: your issue sounds like a typical one I've seen before. It's got to do with the way that the text and fonts are coded and set up. Sometimes the PDF version wants to apply its own formatting or change fonts if it doesn't recognize the source format. Sometimes it'll just kick a letter off to the side a little, or make one number look a little different, especially with what you're describing, a chart with columns that you carefully formatted and aligned then they get knocked all goofy. That is exactly what led me to use the PDF software I have. I use Nitro Pro 8 because those things are bound to happen with any conversion, but with Nitro, you can actually select that text and move it back into position. If I had wanted to take the time, I very well could have just used Nitro to correct all the issues I had with this one, all the leaders were there, I would have had to just select each corrupted dimension text instance, edit the text and delete what was there and type in what it was supposed to be. That was my last resort solution, but I had one thing to try first and it worked so that's that. Well thanks, everyone for all your help and input on this topic.