Text changed when plotting to pdf AutoCAD 2018

[tcarlson424]

I was plotting a couple large drawings yesterday to pdf for submittal to a customer.  The only way I can explain what happened is that it converted half my text in the pdf to gibberish.  Thankfully I discovered this before sending them to the customer.  A smaller drawing I used the publish function and it plotted them fine.   I use cutepdf and have never had any issues with previous versions of AutoCAD.  Today I tried plotting it and cant seem to get it to do the same thing.  My concern is that plotting to pdf isn't exactly a quick process.  Especially when I am working on drawings that are 20 pages or more.  I would say I will just use the publish function from now on but that can get rather confusing with really large drawings.  I attached a copy of the PDF.  You will see under the Schedule of materials and within the drawing itself the text has changed to just random letters also many of the dimensions have changed also.  I'm hoping this was just a fluke and will never happen again.  Just wondering if anyone has seen this before?  Is there an alternative to cutepdf (that actually works)?

[john.vellek]

HI @tcarlson424,

is it possible to atach this drawing file so I can take a look at it? If so, please use eTransmit so I can get the fonts too.

Is there a specific reason to use the CutePDF rather than the built in drivers?

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[tcarlson424]

Wow thank you for the fast reply.  I use cutepdf because in the past when trying to use the built-in pdf function I have had issues with hatching not showing up properly.  I would be fine with you looking at the file.  

[tcarlson424]

I  forgot to mention I am using LT version of AutoCAD 2018 if that makes a difference.

[john.vellek]

Hi @tcarlson424,

I modified the PDF page setup to use the built-in AutoCAD PDF driver and applied that during Publish. Please take a look at the resulting PDF and let me know if you still see anomalies.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[tcarlson424]

I'm not seeing any anomolies with the text however it looks like the wrong paper size was selected so I cant see the whole drawing.  It should be printed using ARCH-D size.

[tcarlson424]

Ok I opened the drawing and tried plotting using the parameters you have set.  Paper size is correct just need to check "fit to paper".  It appears that that the issue I used to have with hatching is gone also.  I will try using the built in pdf function from now on and hope that I don't see that issue again.  Thanks for your help.

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

HI @tcarlson424,

I am glad the built in drivers work for your process. If you want to continue using the CutePDF I suggest that you check with their support to see if they might be able to help you with it.

Cheers

[tcarlson424]

I'm gonna give the built in drivers a shot.  Thanks for your help.  If you wouldn't mind removing the .dwg file from your post.  These are technically property of the company the drawings are for so I'm not sure if they want them readily available on a public forum.  The PDF files can stay though.

[john.vellek]

HI @tcarlson424,

No worries, the dwg has been removed and i see you removed your's as well. Are you sure you don't want me to remove the PDF files too as they could be easily converted into dwg files?

[tcarlson424]

Yeah maybe we should.  Better safe then sorry I guess.  Thanks again for the help.

[asdemeter]

Perhaps you can help me, too.  I have a similar issue, but it's taking annotative text inside one of our blocks (attribute definitions) and blowing them up huge.  It's only when we publish something that comes from our 24x36 page setup, and not when we plot.  And it doesn't matter if it's a PDF or the plotters, it does this.  I posted about it in the forums a while ago, but no one has responded yet.  I'm curious as to what I can possibly change that will work.  Note that I had no issues - but another guy here who had a brand new install did - but I had to do a clean uninstall and reinstall last night, thanks to that awful Windows 10 Creators Update destroying my license.  Now I'm infected with the same problem.  Any ideas?  My post is there with screen shots of what's happening, for the record, but I am placing them here, too.

[tcarlson424]

I actually had a similar situation happen to me before.  With my drawing it was the arrows on my annotations being huge.  I ended exploding the block and re-doing my annotations and it seemed to plot correctly after that.  I tried just re-doing the annotations and the same thing kept happening.  For some reason exploding the block seemed to do the trick.  I'm not sure if you have tried this already and perhaps someone with more knowledge then myself has a better solution.

[asdemeter]

When you say you "redid the annotations", what do you mean?  You rewrote the block and it was fixed?  Or did you have to explode the block every time?

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[tcarlson424]

I only had it happen to me the one time.  Not exactly sure what caused it but exploding seemed to fix it.  After I exploded it all my dimensions and annotations were essentially broken so I deleted them all and re-dimensioned and annotated the block.  After that I was able to plot to pdf without issue.  You may not have to delete the dimensions or annotations I just did it because I didn't want to deal with broken dimensions etc. later if the drawing was redlined.  You can recreate a new block afterwards and hopefully it will be fixed with that also.  I didn't create a new block afterwards as I knew I wouldn't be using it again but I don't see why it wouldn't work. 

[asdemeter]

The only problem with that is that when I explode the blocks, since they're attribute definitions, I lose the text I had in them.  Otherwise, I'd do that until they made a fix.  I wish the AutoCAD expert who responded to this before would reply, though.  

[Anonymous]

Hey Sir, I am facing the same kind of issue I had made one block of Man at signboard for preparing a Traffic Diversion and that block also include words of Arabic as well as the English language in the layout they stay ok but when I plot it with the format of DWG TO PDF they got split into a separate-separate word of Arabic I need your help kindly please respond as soon as possible.