Plotting Issues with 2022 Civil 3D

[civilengineer83]

Okay, so I've got a weird one for me. I recently got a new company laptop and is running Civil 3D 2022. My last computer was running 2019. I have plot tables in my plotters folder that correlate to different clients and a couple are giving me issues. With one, I keep getting this error message:

Now the problem is that I did as I do every single time with a new version of civil 3d and copy over all of my plot tables and plotter configurations and even add this silly size that our one client likes to use. Now I have a remote tower that I use when things get rather heavy on the grading for the sheer fact that my tower has more ass than these laptops they give us. It's still running 2019 and with these exact same parameters it plots just fine. Below is a screenshot of the 2022 version.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what's wrong or what else to check. I've already been in my options making sure that all necessary file paths for support are correct. It's like there's a giant discrepancy between what I'm telling it to plot, what it's telling me that it will plot and what it tells me it can't plot. The plot preview turns up perfectly what it's supposed to plot. It's driving me insane. I have to keep doing the work in one computer, then going to my remote desktop and plotting it from 2019 and that's getting old. Any ideas?

[user181]

Is it the plot command or the publish command you are using that gives an error?

[AllenJessup]

I just had a problem when publishing two layouts to PDF in 2024 cause fatal errors. The maddening thing is I'm not exactly sure what fixed it.

One thing I did was to Recreate the DWG to PDF.pc3 file. Might Help.

[brian.strandberg]

I had a very similar issue with a user last week, it was reporting the missing plot style just like yours, however we verified the file exists and was a valid file.

We reset the user profile and had the same issue.  We then did windows updates and at that point the computer starting bluescreening.  We couldn't fix that so we moved him to a backup computer.

Don't know if this helps, but it is very odd.

[civilengineer83]

I normally use the plot command when I'm just plotting a single sheet. If I'm plotting multiple, then I'll use publish. The crazy thing is, when I publish from SSM, I get some layouts that plot color when they're not supposed to. But when I go manually plot them, they come out black and white/gray scale like they should. And the plot preview again shows it exactly right, but the PDF is in color.

[civilengineer83]

Yep, I agree. It's amazing when you tinker with it and make a change by happenstance that seems to fix it. That's one of the reasons I usually only try one thing at a time so I can hopefully remember what I did! I have had that same issue several times as well. Finish up a drawing, save it, then go to plot it and bam, fatal error city.

[civilengineer83 · Accepted solution]

Oh man, well I reckon I'll not be trying that. All of those outcomes sound bad. Fortunately, I think I have a band aid for my issue. I have just discovered that by turning off "plot" and "publish" in background, my plots are coming out just fine now. Which is really freaking odd, but hey, at least I'm plotting now.

[AllenJessup]

@civilengineer83 I was trying one thing at a time. I had tried the updated DWG to PDF.pc3 but had the same error. I set it back to the original Page Setup targeting out PDF printer and still have the FE. So I gave up on publishing and tried to plot one layout at a time. That worked. Jut to be thorough I tried Publish again and it worked. 

[user181]

Do you also have regular autocad installed on the same computer?  If so open autocad and set up the exact same plot setting for printer support paths, paper size, ctb, etc. then close both programs and open civil 3d again and try publishing again. If you have autocad also installed the publish command will get settings from autocad even if you are using civil 3d

[pendean]

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@civilengineer83 wrote:

...I have just discovered that by turning off "plot" and "publish" in background, my plots are coming out just fine now...

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That is the most common solution to issues like you described: and I suspect you did the same in your older 2019 software, you just forgot.

Thanks for sharing your fix.

[user181]

@rosie_lucas1 (Dean?) Shutting off a feature is not a solution. It's avoiding the feature (a valuable feature) instead of finding the solution. He even called it a band aid in his post. I've never had to shut off background publishing. 

[Anton_Huizinga]

There was a plot error introduced in Civil 3D 2024.1, which has been fixed in 2024.3 update:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/CIV3D/2024/ENU/?guid=civil_3d_2024_3_fixed_issues

Maybe that caused the issue you faced. 

[civilengineer83]

Now there's a thought. That's totally plausible. I may give that a try later today when I'm done with work. They added AutoCAD to this machine as well, which I never use and funnily enough, is the one set up as the default when you open a Civil 3D drawing....of which I get confused at the symbols to use when you try and change the default. Like why can't you people just spell it out for me?!?!?! I don't need a pretty little picture, just a name beneath that says either AutoCAD or Civil 3D. That's neither here nor there, just another rant I get on sometimes when I double click a file and AutoCAD starts...I'll open up an AutoCAD file and make all those same changes and see what happens. Never had to in the past, so it might not work, but then again, never know with CAD.

[civilengineer83]

Actually, no. The other 2019 version I'm using is still set up the same way. But I do remember people saying that turning those off helped their issues with something they were doing, but it never affected me. Always liked the ability to set it to plot and be able to keep working. Some files I produce can take a long time to plot and I hate feeling out of commission for 30 minutes because of a plot. Even made worse if I forgot something, or misspelled something and have to do it all over again. As of now, it works until I can work out what the real problem with it is.