Printing Help

d_salesU937X
Participant

Printing Help

d_salesU937X
Participant
Participant

Hi all

 

I have a drawing which is crashing/freezing my customers laptop when printing and I'm not sure why? It's 2???kB which isn't usual for me to have but it was taking forever for them to try and print and eventually it would freeze. I tried removing the PDF layer info when plotting and removing the line overlay feature on the PDF. I'm not sure what else to try. I had an error the other day where it was consistently freezing my cad when doing plot preview so I moved the drawing to another file but this still has problems.

 

I have included a snippet of the drawing just in case it's something obvious

 

Thanks in advance

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imadHabash
Mentor
Mentor

Hi,

It will be good if we have the CAD drawing itself for testing.

Let's guess here if you check and delete any layer filters, any changes?

 

Imad Habash

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jreidKVSUZ
Advocate
Advocate

First you should exit out of your drawing.

While still in AutoCAD type RECOVER and open your drawing to see if there are errors.

Then when inside the Drawing type AUDIT and say Yes and let that run to see if there are any errors.

You may want to do a Purge All and clean out any unneeded blocks layers etc.

Then when you plot, see my link to a solution of how to print drawings and the settings I use.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/sheet-set-quot-publish-to-pdf-quot-error/m-p/12981973#M...

My solution is at the bottom of the link.

Hope this helps!

JRR!

d_salesU937X
Participant
Participant

So I did recover and Audit which fixed lots of errors but im trying to print it now and it is taking FOREVER to flatten....Ive not had a drawing do this before.

 

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pendean
Community Legend
Community Legend

@d_salesU937X wrote:

... it is taking FOREVER to flatten...


What are you plotting to that AutoCAD is going through a 'fattening" process please?

 

You are having problems with a PDF from AutoCAD, aren't you. Instead of fixing the DWG file, you need to turn off all the features of the PDF that create layers that need flattening. Just layer info alone is not enough.

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d_salesU937X
Participant
Participant

I plot it to PDF and go open the drawing in Adobe but when I go to print it in Adobe it says flattening and then takes forever.

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jreidKVSUZ
Advocate
Advocate

Try a different plotter for PDFs. I never use the Microsoft to ADOBE. I always use AutoCAD PDF Smallest.

But once you print your PDF, in Adobe there is a command to Reduce the PDF file size.

So as a habit, when I plot I make the file a crazy name like temp, then I do the Reduce and make the name what it should be called.

But, with all that said, I believe it is your Plotter and Network. The buffer size that the plotter can take fills up and has to hold the input of the file from the network and goes into flattening the pdf file to do so. I would get this message once in a while on my old plotter. But give it time and it prints the PDF out fine. But time is the issue when you need it now.  Try the commands I said and maybe the reduced size will help.

Hope this helps!

JRR!

jreidKVSUZ_1-1725543728259.png

 

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d_salesU937X
Participant
Participant

I just plotted on AutoCAD smallest file option and still awful

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TheCADnoob
Mentor
Mentor
Accepted solution

have you looked at this article and tried its suggestions?

 

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/PDFs-created-using...

CADnoob

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jreidKVSUZ
Advocate
Advocate

ok... going all out on this one.

Try re-creating the drawing. Maybe there are issues there we cannot fix or find.

Do EDIT COPY and select everything. (rem if you have froze or turned off layers to take them too if needed).

Start a new drawing and do SAVEAS into the fame folder (do this so if you have XREFs they search the same folder).

Then inside a new drawing use EDIT then PASTE to ORGIAINAL COORDINATES.

Do this for both Model Space and Paper Space. 

Now run Audit and say Yes to make sure no errors then SAVE your drawing.

Now setup your plotter settings (rem you can use Drop Down in Page Setup and Select PREVIOUS and it should now be set to match your original drawing.  SAVE your drawing before attempting to plot.

Now plot your drawing out and see what happens.

Hope this helps.

JRR!

jreidKVSUZ_0-1725548837894.png

 

 

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d_salesU937X
Participant
Participant
Accepted solution

Thank you all very much for your TheCADNoob solved it - it looks like the amount of transparency in the document(the building and site were 85% transparent which Adobe didn't like. I've corrected the issue by plotting in a light grey for the areas I need light and removing the transparency.

TheCADnoob
Mentor
Mentor

Glad we were able to help!

CADnoob

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