2016 R2 PDF printing issues....

[Anonymous]

Have been using Adobe Acrobat Pro as my pdf printer for years with no issues.........Now since updating ro R2, having all kinds of issues with pdf's.......

1.  If I've done any editing of anything, the pdf printer just sits there and the progress bar does absolutely nothing.  I am forced to shut down REVIT, Relaunch, reopen Project and start Print reoutine all over again...................Once Pdf pops up for review , the PDF Progress bar consistanly show around 75-80% done, but then nothing..I've waited as long as 15minutes for it to complete.....alas still hangs...........

2. If after completeing one 'print routine in pdf', I try to Immediately start another with different params,  the PDF Progress dialog pops up......then absolutely nothing happens..............have waited as long as 1-hr just to see..nothing...............Have to shut down REVIt, and again relaunch, etc..........

3. Also noticed a new PROCESS runnning now.....Something called "REVIT WORKER.EXE".........wha is this now?????

See attached scrn shot for pdf window...........

Mike

[mmchafin]

I installed update 1 for 2016 R2 and I'm still having issues printing to PDF.  The trouble seems to be linked to the non-rectangular viewports.  When I reset all of those, I was able to print my set to PDF without problems.  Though after the pdf was successfully created the "Creating Adobe PDF" dialog remained open with a frozen progress bar.

[JeffDaughton7498]

Has anyone found a solution to this problem as R2 Update 1 does not seem to fix it?  It is intermittent for one of my users, but happens enough that it is very unreliable.  One observation we have made on this is if you print a multi-sheet PDF as separate sheets/files, instead of combining in Revit, then things appear to work just fine.  At least I have not been able to make it fail while doing this.  I asked the user if they have any non-rectangular viewports in their model and they said they do not.  

We have at least 10 users in my office running Revit 2016 R2 Update 1, but only 1 user has the PDF printing issue.  I have tried printing to PDF in several different models, including the advanced sample model, and they all eventually have the problem on that machine if you combine multiple sheets in the PDF print job.

Any other ideas/thoughts on a resolution?

[Lance.Coffey]

Update 1 addressed an issue with Color Fill calculations (introduced with R2) where the calculation would hang up (this would be visible in the Background Processes dialog) and this could lead to a hang up when printing to PDF.

If there are no background processes showing up in the dialog when the hang up occurs, then the issue you are seeing would be separate.

There are several possible troubleshooting steps to take (for the symptoms you described):

• Try printing to a different PDF printer (many people indicated that the original issue was specific to particular PDF producers).
• Verify if the issue is project specific (e.g. try printing to PDF from another project of comparable size).
• Try a different user account (this can help rule out misconfiguration or corruption within a Windows user account.
• Look at each of the views being printed (when a hang-up occurs) and verify there are no non-rectangular crop regions.
• Uninstall Revit and reinstall without loading R2 (this would help to confirm if the hang up is specific to R2).

[JeffDaughton7498]

I checked for any Revit background processes going on during the PDF printing hang and it was all clear.

Here is what I have observed/done so far:

• Printing to PDF from different projects yields the same result.  I even printed from the Advanced Sample project and was able to get it to hang.  So, it appears to be project independent.
• I switched to a different user account and the same issue occured.  So it doesn't appear to be user account corruption related.
• I asked the user if they had any non-rectangular crop regions in their model and they said no, so I would assume this is not the issue. 
• I've uninstalled and re-installed Adobe Acrobat with no change in hangs.
• I uinstalled Revit 2016, re-installed, and patched back up to R2 Update 1 with no change in PDF hangs.  I need to try re-installing and patching back up to just before R2, as you suggested, and see what happens there. 

I'll post back once I try re-installing.

Thanks,

Jeff

[JeffDaughton7498]

So after uninstalling Revit 2016 (and all add-ons, cleared registry, and deleted all uninstall leftovers) and reinstalling Revit 2016 SP2, everything worked fine with the Adobe PDF printer.  I was able to produce multiple "combined" PDF sets, from 2 different Revit models, and I had no hangs.  I then installed the R2 update and almost immediately the Adobe PDF printer started to hang when printing "combined" PDF sets.  I tried it on 2 different Revit models and tried it multiple times, even after a reboot, and it would hang at least 50% of the time.

I then installed the CutePDF printer and was able to produce "combined" PDF sets with no problem using that printer.  I switched back to trying the Adobe PDF printer and it again hung.  I switched back to the CutePDF printer and it worked fine.  I did this on 2 different models and it produced the same results.

Next, I installed the R2 Update 1 and it had no effect on the problem.  The Adobe PDF printer would hang and the CutePDF printer would not.

It would appear the problem is somehow linked to Revit 2016 R2 and the Adobe PDF printer.  In this case the Adobe PDF printer is from Acrobat DC (2015), version 2015.006.30119, which is the latest version as of this writing.

Any ideas? 

[mtyp]

I have attempted all suggested fixes in this thread... and nothing.  However I did just make a discovery...

I can print smaller projects, but not bigger ones.  Which got me to thinking, what is the major difference betweeen the two... LINKS!!!  I have a modular project with lots of attached type links.  So I unloaded the links and it printed straight away no issues.  Loaded just one of those back into the project and epic failure... but I left it to it and it finally produced a PDF.  I loaded my links back in and am currently leaving it to it's own devices and seeing if it prints.  But this isn't ideal as it could take hours... or it could just crash.  I did see a massive amount of memory being used, just passed through 13gb and it appears to be "Not Responding" and seemed to pause at intervals every 1gb of memory used or so.

I have also tested this on all available versions of Revit 2016 and Adobe PDF, PDFcreator and FoxitPDF.  I will attempt Bluebeam next, but this is hardly a fix, unless it's been bundled in the next update to Revit courtesy of Autodesk... 😛

@Lance.Coffey hope this helps in finding a result.  And this print job I'm attempting just passed through 24gb... luckily the machine has 64gb aye...

[mtyp]

Also, is printing a multi-threaded operation?

[1967gto]

I have no irregular crop regions on an 80 meg job.  Still having the problem. The only thing I found that works is doing a preview and then going back to print.  It works every time, but now a job with 100 plus sheets will take for ever, because there is no previewing a multi page print.

I have all the updates for Revit and Adobe Acrobat Pro.  My hard drive crashed (right before a deadline) and I had to reinstall all the software.  I did all the updates in order so that wouldn't be an issue.

Any actual help from Autodesk would be appreciated.  This is beyond frustrating.

[JeffDaughton7498]

Toddo, it sounds like we are having the same problem here in our office as you are having.  Revit 2016 patched up to the latest version and having issues printing multi-paged (combined) PDFs with the Adobe Acrobat printer.  From my previous testing noted in this thread, it all starts when you install the R2 patch for Revit. 

@Lance.Coffey do you have any more info for us?

Thanks.

[mtyp]

Had a break through yesterday.  Install PDF Creator 1.6.2 and use this as your PDF printer.  It seems to be the most stable and works with other addins (like RTV Tools Drawing manager).

We also discovered that a 3D view on the cover sheet was cause it to crash out also.  While a nice to have, not a must have, so I deleted it and printed no worries.  But I suggested adding the view back as a JPEG instead.

Hope that helps!!

[1967gto]

Thanks mtyp. Will give PDF Creator a try

[Anonymous]

I have had this problem ever since I upgraded to 2016 R2. I finally got through to support and they have told me that Revit and Acrobat have maxed out my available RAM and this is what is causing the print spool to crash. It seems like the background program that Autodesk created in R2 to increase threading is a memory hog. After lengthy discussions with the guys at Autodesk support it looks like we will all have to upgrade our machines to keep using their software. I think Autodesk has really screwed up on this release and it doesn't sound like it is going to change for Revit 2017. I am seriously considering switching to a different BIM software since Revit seems to be going backwards at this point. This release has been nothing but a nightmare for me.

[JeffDaughton7498]

I though R2 Update 1 was supposed to help with that issue.  I could be wrong, but it seems like I read that somewhere.

For me, even trying to print from a very small model can produce the issue.  The system with the issue has 16GB of RAM, and although that is not a lot, it should be enough to produce a combined PDF set on a 50MB model.

[1967gto]

I have 32 gigs of ram working on an 80 meg file, and it's still a problem.

32 gigs should be more than enough.  Sounds as if they've written something that will take all available, regardless how much you have.

Bad practice.  Nobody works on a single program all day without interaction with another.  Acrobat has been around for a long time, and to suggest that it owns part of the responsibility is lame at best.

[mtyp]

Have the last few posters tried the alternatives, like PDF creator 1.6.2.
And removing 3d views?

And I agree that Adobe and autodesk need to find the source of the memory
leak.

[JeffDaughton7498]

Alternative PDF creators seem to work fine for me, so this issue appears to be mostly about Revit 2016 R2 and the Adobe PDF printer.

[1967gto]

I just downloaded PDF Creator 2.3 and it works fine.

If there is a problem with such an industry standard software like Acrobat, than what else is wrong....not to be a cynic

[Lance.Coffey]

@mtyp 

This Model Performance Technical Note has a section (page 4) with information on multithreaded commands:

Revit 2016 Model Performance Technical Note

Vector printing is listed (although Raster printing is not)

[Lance.Coffey]

In my testing of this issue, I found that Acrobat DC is not a native 64-bit application.

If some change in R2 introduced additional complexity of the geometry output (or additional complexity in Acrobat's interpretation of the data), and the print jobs were already close to the maximum that could be handled by Acrobat, then we could be seeing an issue with the 2GB memory limit for 32-bit applications. (When testing sample files with other PDF producers, I found the spool data was exceeding 7GBs).

To start narrowing down the cause of this behavior, we can take a closer look for what is leading to this behavior:

- If printing a combined PDF, from a sheet set, try printing individual sheets and see if the process gets hung up on a particular sheet.

- Check if a large amount of Raster Processing is being used (this will increase the size of the print data).

- Check if non-rectangular crop regions are used (this can significantly increase the size of the print data e.g. 1GB or more per view)

- Check if there are shadows/shading enabled within many views (this will force Raster Printing for these views).

Additionally, I've not been able to reproduce this behavior on my testing machines. Does anyone have a sample project that could be shared where this issue reliably occurs, or possibly steps to reproduce the issue in one of the Sample projects included with Revit?

[Anonymous]

Lance,

I provided you with a few models for you to look at. All of those models have had the same issue when printing. The Sand point model never had issues when printing from Revit 2014 or Revit 2015. I have shadows on the floor plans, sections, exterior elevations, interior elevations and section perspectives. I always have my print settings to raster print because I feel it produces a better graphical quality than raster printing.

Since upgrading to Revit 2016 R2 this model has taken significantly longer to produce a PDF and after printing to a PDF once I have to restart Revit to create another PDF even if I just want to print one sheet. This model is 300mg, but the same thing happens on a 25mg file.

I am using Revit on an iMac with Windows 7 (boot camp) with 16gb of RAM with the latest version of acrobat DC.