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PDF's not coming out clear, blotchy looking

rpayne
Enthusiast

PDF's not coming out clear, blotchy looking

rpayne
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello All,

 

I'm trying to create PDF's using AutoCAD PDF (High Quality Print).pc3 driver. Paper size is 36"x108".  When the PDF is done it comes out blotchy looking.  Each letter in a string of text appear with different line weights.  Same goes for the line work as well.  I have attached a PDF file and a screen shot of the print settings I'm using.  I have tried various DPI's with no change in the look of the PDF.

 

This is a rare occurrence.  Some PDF's only have this issue when zoomed to extents but, when zooming in the issue goes away.  Zoom out and the issue returns.  This is the first PDF where zooming in still has this particular issue.

 

I have tried this in both Plant 3D 2018 and AutoCAD 2020 with the same results.  I have also tried using the Adobe PDF.pc3 driver, PDF is not created.  When I look at the Plot/Publish Report, the operation completes but the device reports an unknown error and the job is canceled.

 

If more information is needed please let me know.  Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

Best Regards,

Rick

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Respuestas (9)

Alfred.NESWADBA
Consultant
Consultant

Hi,

 

>> Each letter in a string of text appear with different line

>> weights. Same goes for the line work as well

Have you looked to the PDF with 100% zoom?

If not make sure you see it with 100% and verify then the lineweights.

 

That's what I see, not really issues with different letter lineweights:

 

20190626_220417_0001.png

 

>> when zooming in the issue goes away.
Well, that is hte nature of pixels on the screen and how your viewer (PDF-Viewer) does antialiasing.

If you have 2 pixels lineweight and then zoom out so 1.5 pixels should show the lineweight you know that a pixel can be colored or not, but not half pixels. If the PDF-Viewer does a good antialiasing you would not recognize this behavior, but without antialiasing you see sometimes a line with 1 pixel width, sometimes with 2 pixels width, and that looks then bad.

 

If you want to create a PDF for the display, then don't use such a big format.
If you want to have the PDF prepared for being printed to that large size you always will have issues on your display (as long as you don't have 108" display with 300dpi :cara_guiñando_un_ojo: )

 

- alfred -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alfred NESWADBA
ISH-Solutions GmbH / Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS
www.ish-solutions.at ... blog.ish-solutions.at ... LinkedIn ... CDay 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(not an Autodesk consultant)
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pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend
Unless you made changes to it, the MONOCHROME.CTB plot style table does absolutely no lineweights what so ever by default, and when I turned on LWDISPLAY and zoomed into your modelspace content I saw no lineweights set that way either.

SInce you use SHX fonts in the file, they will also need to be set with either a physical LWEIGHT setting or to a pen with a lineweight setting in your MONOCHROME.CTB file.

What is your AutoCAD experience level if I may ask? it helps others better explain how to address your issues if the info I provided above did not shine a light on the issues for you to address.

rpayne
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Alfred,

 

Thanks for the reply!  This is what I see and I am guessing the  Class Society also saw and kicked it back to my company to fix this issue. Note not the company in the title block.  We modified the drawing for retrofit.

 

Adobe Acrobat XAdobe Acrobat XUp until now when zooming in the PDF balanced out, regardless of the percentage.  In this case it's not and this is the first drawing I've seen like this in the past 10-15 years.  As far as the format goes, the PDF's are for both viewing and printing.  Since I work on ships I can't go any smaller, plan views of decks tend to be rather long and splitting them tend to be more of a problem.

 

Interesting thing on pixels.  You go me wondering if there is something up with the text of the drawing.  Width issue.  Guess I'll check it out and see what's up there.  Thanks again for your help.

 

Rick

 

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s.borello
Advisor
Advisor

Try using DWG TO PDF.pc3.  I couldn't replicate your issue using this plot setting in MEP 2018.  See attached.

 

 

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rpayne
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

@pendean 

Thanks for your reply.  I should have mentioned that my company didn't start this drawing and I am at least the 2nd person to work on this drawing in my Company.

 

In regards to the CTB file only the colors have been changed so they all come out black.  We don't have the CTB files that were used for printing this drawing out originally so we used the monochrome ctb.  I'm not sure of the origin of the drawing.  That is if it was started in AutoCAD or if it came from a different CAD package.

 

I've been using AutoCAD for the last 25 years or so.

 

Going back to this issue I am no wondering if the issue I am having is related to the width of the text. I know Arial text when compressed looks weird in PDF's. @Alfred.NESWADBA post mentioned how different number of pixels can show different line weights.  There could be something there.  I did change the line weight to default in layer properties.  Will run another PDF to see if there is any change.  Thanks again for your reply!

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Alfred.NESWADBA
Consultant
Consultant

Hi,

 

>> This is what I see

Try to open it with a different viewer, I'm using PDF-XChange Viewer.

 

I know for Adobe Reader that these settings can be adjusted and helps in some cases: >>>click<<<

 

- alfred -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alfred NESWADBA
ISH-Solutions GmbH / Ingenieur Studio HOLLAUS
www.ish-solutions.at ... blog.ish-solutions.at ... LinkedIn ... CDay 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(not an Autodesk consultant)
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pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend
Forgive me, but I'm not sure I understand all that you are going on about: the simple issue is the file is drawn with no line weights and uses SHX "stick" fonts that have no line weight either.

All easy to fix with either LWEIGHT settings to objects, or line weight settings in your plot style table, and possibly changing the SHX fonts to TTF inSTYLE command.

Or as noted by others do you just need to use a different PDF viewer so you are not so distracted by Adobe Acrobat's gimmick settings to speed up that bloatware of a viewer?

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rpayne
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

First off thanks for all the help.  I've been pulled off this job but, still looking into the issue.  It still hasn't be worked out completely.  Pushing this back to the Classification Society.

 

@pendean  I have tried what you said and changed the line weight  for the text layer.  While it made the text darker, every other pair of letters/numbers came out the same way.  I have a feeling it has something to do with the width of the text.  While we typically use the ROMANS font and width set to 0, I think, we haven't had any problems like this.  Even using the monochrome ctb file.  Vertical and horizontal have different weights/widths when zoomed to extents.  When we zoom in, at any percentage, the lines balance out or look the same.  I didn't have the budget to fix all 4 sheets to the drawing, only had the time to modify what was needed for the project. There was a lot of single line text on the drawing.

 

Again, I would like to say thanks for the help!

 

Best Regards,

Rick

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rpayne
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Solución aceptada

Ok, I have been made aware of a possible work around or solution to the issue I had with this particular PDF.  One of the Engineers at my Office just reprinted the PDF using Adobe Acrobat.  Reprinted with the Adobe PDF driver and reduced the DPI to 600 or 300.  Used custom paper size and everything seemed to come out OK.  Simple solution that I didn't think of....  Reprint was done with the same PDF that I had.  I have attached a PNG of a portion of the print.