Print to PDF How to make it black & white?

[Anonymous]

I printed a set of drawings using DWG to PDF. I sent the files to a print house. All the hatches got washed out and many light color lines were washed out.
I belive this is because the plot I made ended up being a color pdf showing all the layer colors.

If the drawing printed to pdf by line weight, as I had set it in the page set-up manager, I think the printhouse printer would plot correctly. or,
if the drawing printed to pdf in black and white the printer would print it by line weight.

How do I make DWG to PDF printing end up in black and white?

How does a third party printer recognize plot styles, screens and line weights?

I cannot find any settings in auto cad or in adobe reader which will change it. Funny though, I open the same files in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and it they are in black and white. I save them and open them again in adobe reader and they are black and white. I'm sure this is not the process autocad had in mind. What is the trick?

Adobe reader just upgraded in the middle of this version so maybe that has something to do with it. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

you don't mention what plot style you are using!
Is it your own or an OOTB?

wrote in message news:[email protected]...
I printed a set of drawings using DWG to PDF. I sent the files to a print
house. All the hatches got washed out and many light color lines were washed
out.
I belive this is because the plot I made ended up being a color pdf showing
all the layer colors.

If the drawing printed to pdf by line weight, as I had set it in the page
set-up manager, I think the printhouse printer would plot correctly. or,
if the drawing printed to pdf in black and white the printer would print it
by line weight.

How do I make DWG to PDF printing end up in black and white?

How does a third party printer recognize plot styles, screens and line
weights?

I cannot find any settings in auto cad or in adobe reader which will change
it. Funny though, I open the same files in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 and it they
are in black and white. I save them and open them again in adobe reader
and they are black and white. I'm sure this is not the process autocad had
in mind. What is the trick?

Adobe reader just upgraded in the middle of this version so maybe that has
something to do with it. Any thoughts?

[ToanDN]

If you see the PDFs as black and white so they should be printed as such. Unless the PDFs are in color but your monitor is black and white, which is not likely to happen.

Plot styles, line weights, screens setting only account for when you print to PDFs and has nothing to do with they printing your PDFs to their plotter. I think you've been mixing up knowledge between PLT and PDF.

Again, are the PDFs back and white or color? You said one thing at first then another later, which is very confusing?

[3wood]

When you print in Acrobat, there is an option at bottom left corner of the dialogue box which allows user "Print color as black".(see attached image)
Select it if you want print any color drawing as black and white - But there is no gray tone.

3wood
http://sites.google.com/site/cadkits/ Edited by: 3wood on Sep 30, 2009 1:55 AM

[Anonymous]

Post a PDF sample, let's resolve it once: inexperienced print-houses are
more common than you think.

--
Dean Saadallah
http://LTisACAD.blogspot.com
--

[Anonymous]

I am using a customized plot style table. It is a copy of monochrome.ctb. All I changed were the grays which I screened. all of the pen properties are set to black. I have tried print by color and print by lineweight using the same pdf printer but there is no difference. The pdf printer that came with the program simply prints what it sees in the display- all the colors.

To clarify. the PDF file prints to Adobe Acrobat. The common free program that everyone uses. I opened the file in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 which is an upgrade program that I pay a license to use. - in this program the lines were all black.

I am only doing the basics. Print DWG to PDF, email to a printer. It just made a mess. I sent a .DWF of the same file to the printer but his dwf printer driver does not recognize my text. The .dwf prints black like it should.

I am now experimenting with printing a pdf from a dwf. This is lot more steps but a potential work around. I shouldn't have to go through all this.

Attached is the pdf file. Note the light grey brich hatching gets washed out and even dissapears when printed at the print house (because the printer sees it as a color instead of a line)

I just recieved a message that the pdf file is too large.

[Anonymous]

All the pdf files I want to send that are a good example are being rejected as too large. They are greater than 1,600 kb

[Anonymous]

I cannot find this dialog. I am using adobe acrobat 9. There are no features or preferences for printing to black. I cannot find anything about it on the help menu.
Here is something from adobe reader community forum. at Acrobatusers.com

"I have several users using Acorbat 7 Professional on Windows XP and some of them have the "Print color as black" option and some don't. Any idea why?"

They all use the same network printer and I am using the same file just to make sure its not a file issue.

Response by some guy named isaacs who is a member.

"The option is disabled when you use the print as image option in the "advanced print" dialog. Otherwise, it is on."

That does not make sense either because I do not have the "print as image" box checked.

[Anonymous]

There is something wrong with you ctb (modified??) file or the layer or
colour settings you are using.
a ctb file will only control the 1-255 colour range and anything outside
that will print colour?
the pdf file should be coming out in B&W not colour unless desired.


wrote in message news:[email protected]...
I am using a customized plot style table. It is a copy of monochrome.ctb.
All I changed were the grays which I screened. all of the pen properties are
set to black. I have tried print by color and print by lineweight using the
same pdf printer but there is no difference. The pdf printer that came with
the program simply prints what it sees in the display- all the colors.

To clarify. the PDF file prints to Adobe Acrobat. The common free program
that everyone uses. I opened the file in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 which is an
upgrade program that I pay a license to use. - in this program the lines
were all black.

I am only doing the basics. Print DWG to PDF, email to a printer. It just
made a mess. I sent a .DWF of the same file to the printer but his dwf
printer driver does not recognize my text. The .dwf prints black like it
should.

I am now experimenting with printing a pdf from a dwf. This is lot more
steps but a potential work around. I shouldn't have to go through all this.

Attached is the pdf file. Note the light grey brich hatching gets washed
out and even dissapears when printed at the print house (because the printer
sees it as a color instead of a line)

I just recieved a message that the pdf file is too large.

[ToanDN]

Your PDF is in colors so you can't hold the print-house for poor quality plot. Are those color objects within 0-255 color range? If they are true color then they will always print in colors under any CTB settings. Perhaps time to post your CAD and CTB files (don't need the whole CAD drawing, just one of those color objects should do it).

[Anonymous]

you have to change your ctb file to print all colors as black.

"Nathan" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
There is something wrong with you ctb (modified??) file or the layer or
colour settings you are using.
a ctb file will only control the 1-255 colour range and anything outside
that will print colour?
the pdf file should be coming out in B&W not colour unless desired.


wrote in message news:[email protected]...
I am using a customized plot style table. It is a copy of monochrome.ctb.
All I changed were the grays which I screened. all of the pen properties are
set to black. I have tried print by color and print by lineweight using the
same pdf printer but there is no difference. The pdf printer that came with
the program simply prints what it sees in the display- all the colors.

To clarify. the PDF file prints to Adobe Acrobat. The common free program
that everyone uses. I opened the file in Adobe Acrobat 7.0 which is an
upgrade program that I pay a license to use. - in this program the lines
were all black.

I am only doing the basics. Print DWG to PDF, email to a printer. It just
made a mess. I sent a .DWF of the same file to the printer but his dwf
printer driver does not recognize my text. The .dwf prints black like it
should.

I am now experimenting with printing a pdf from a dwf. This is lot more
steps but a potential work around. I shouldn't have to go through all this.

Attached is the pdf file. Note the light grey brich hatching gets washed
out and even dissapears when printed at the print house (because the printer
sees it as a color instead of a line)

I just recieved a message that the pdf file is too large.

[Anonymous]

Your plot style table settings are at fault: your PDF is in color. You are
asking the printshop to compensate and not liking the results.

As a test, create a new DWG file, draw a few lines of various colors, plot
with your plot style table, save the settings in the file then save the
file. Post all three, dwg/ctb/pdf here for a review.

--
Dean Saadallah
http://LTisACAD.blogspot.com
--

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your help. I made a new drawing like you said and when I printed it to pdf now it works fine. It printed in black and white. This means that the problem was either drawing specific or sheet specific or some other wierd thing is going on. My plot style tables have stayed the same for years. They are just monochrome, and they were monochrome yesterday when I printed. I cannot figure it out and I am so tired of troubleshooting it. Maybe the little elf in the computer fixed it while I was gone.
Last night I spent hours converting all the drawings to dwf then printing them to pdf so that I could get my project out to bid. It cost me an extra $200 to reprint all the sets. I give up. Thank you everyone who participated.

[Anonymous]

Is your problem file a dwg set to STB perhaps?
Have you tried to simply create another layout and test?
Have you tried fixing the file, Audit/Recover, or even Wblock?

--
--
Dean Saadallah
http://LTisACAD.blogspot.com
--

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

This same problem occured on 24 individual layouts made from 16 individual .dwg files. All the files are set to .ctb. All the files used the same plot style. Two days ago all of the pdf files were in color. The pdf file that I sent to the print house were in color. I saw the color pdf's at the print house on another computer.

Today I spoke with a contractor who I gave the pdf files to. They printed them on their printer with no prolem. All the pdf files were in black and white on their computer. They have the old version of adobe reader. I went back to my computer and now alll the pdfs that I originally sent were now in black and white. I have no idea how this happened.

Yes I have done multiple tests. Yes I have audited, purged, -purged R, each drawing prior to the first print

I am convinced that this is an Adobe Reader issue. I downloaded the latest version of adobe reader half way through this project. I did not have this problem prior to.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like you and the print-house need to come to an
understanding/resolution to the problem.

If you think Adobe is the problem, you need to go there for a fix, the
AutoCAD solutions have already been discussed here and per your test file
from yesterday (and more if other users dive in).

Adobe public forum discussion areas are at:
http://forums.adobe.com/index.jspa

--
Dean Saadallah
http://LTisACAD.blogspot.com
--

[ToanDN]

Again, post a DWG and the CTB here as suggested before.

[Anonymous]

Attached dwg test

[Anonymous]

attched .ctb file

[Anonymous]

attached .pdf