Text and features changing to gray when plotting

[Anonymous]

First time posting, apologies in advance if I'm doing this wrong,

I'm having an issue in AutoCAD where I go to plot a finished sheet set and everything appears fine in the preview (S003_Error_1) but when I look at the printed product there's some random errors with the text and some features (S003_Error2). It looks like half the letters in the text changed to gray randomly. I went through several different plot styles and plotters but all with the same result. 

[nrz13]

Hi, and welcome to the Autodesk forums, where users like yourself try to help other users.

Would you be able to attach the drawing (or a representative sample of it) here for others to look at?  What version of AutoCAD are you running?  Enter ABOUT at the command line to see the exact version with any patches installed.

[clindner]

Hi, @Anonymous 

A few questions for clarification:

• Does it change the same pieces of text to gray each time? Or do pieces of text plot fine one time then plot gray another time?
• Any chance that some of the pieces of text have a transparency assigned to them?
• What color are the objects in model space? Is it possible that the color in MS is not mapped to black in the plot style?
• Are the pieces of text all on the same layer?
• If you are plotting from paper space, are there any "layer property overrides" in the viewport that might cause those objects to plot a different color or be transparent?

As with most troubleshooting, it's a process of nailing down a pattern (i.e. "when I do this and this, it happens.") and unfortunately that can take time to determine. 

Hope this helps. 

[Anonymous]

• It appears that it's the same pieces of text changing to grey each time.
• All the text has their transparency set to ByLayer and all layers transparency is set to 0.
• Most of the text is green(3), with some white or red. I posted a screenshot from model space below. I double checked the plot styles and the color is mapped to black.
• All the text is on the same layer.
• I removed any layer property overrides but no change.

I'll keep throwing my head against it and try to make it work. 

Thanks again for taking the time to help, I really appreciate it.

[Anonymous]

I'm running AutoCAD 2021.

[pendean]

Is the screenshot with gray in your first post from a PDF? If yes, which PDF viewer is that? and what if you tried a different PDF viewer?
As a test, only a test, if you opted for the MONOCHROME.CTB does your gray issue go away?

[Anonymous]

How are you plotting the sheet set? If Publishing or from Sheet Set Manager the page setup is not always what you set on the layout tab page setup. 

If plotting to a PDF, what if you zoom in on the text in Acrobat? Is it still grey? What does a paper plot look like?

What font are you plotting?

You mentioned colors. If you're using a color based plot style, the color typically determines grayscale and line width plotted. But TTF fonts plot as they will, color doesn't affect them. 

[nrz13]

Would you be able to attach the drawing (or a representative sample of it) here for others to look at?  You don't need to share the full .dwg file.  Just make a copy of the file and delete everything but the problematic text in the area you've shared in your screen shots.

I would also sign into your Autodesk Account and download the latest patch in case the issue has been fixed.  For 2021, I think it's 2021.1.1.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

So I found out it was actually an issue with the text style, had to use foxit drivers to print them properly. I guess the text style we were using was old and didn't render properly in Adobe Acrobat