Depth Cueing Problems on PDF

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone!

I'm trying to use the new Depth Cueing feature in Revit 2017.

The problem is whatever setting I put in the Depth Cueing feature, my elevation looks all faded when I print in to PDF file. On screen, in Revit, it looks good until I print into PDF file. I tried to set the Fade Limit percentage at 99% to see if its making any changes, when I print into a PDF file, the building is all faded and Light looking even if the building is close to my elevation tag. And when I put to 100%, its all normal, but the effect of fading is not present anymore with this setting.

Is this new feature buggy?

Is my Adobe PDF printer needs special settings to print the building faded like I see it on screen in Revit?

Need help, I tried to use different kind of Far clipping with the Depth Cueing. I moved the scroller in Depth Cueing feature in every direction. I don't know what to do anymore to make my front building looking dark and the rest faded.

Here some images of what I'm trying to say.

[Sahay_R]

Thank you for the screenshots, @Anonymous. This supports the view that I have long held that the Depth Cueing tool does not do what we want it to. I hate the way that it fades out lines instead of controlling the weights.

I would go old fashioned, and use the Linework tool to control lineweights. 

[ToanDN]

@Anonymous

Does it print better if you export to a DWF or another PDF printer?

Worst case scenario, you use the good ol trick, create several huge mass objects and place them at different fading ranges.  Make them semi-transparent and you can have the same depth cueing effect, or even better because you are now habving the complete control the range distance and the fading value.

[Anonymous]

It's horrible when I'm exporting to DWF, even with high quality "On"...

[Anonymous]

I tried CutePDF as a printer and I have the same results when Depth cueing is active. But the thing is when I'm previewing before printing, everything looks kind of good, and when it's printing into a PDF file, everything goes wrong. 

After I deactivate Depth Cueing, everything is printing normal whatever PDF printer I use, but I don't have the Fade effect anymore. So maybe your old fashion way will work better with the Mass transparency effect.

[aghis_no]

This is caused by the raster printing.
Probably, the use of depth cueing can only be printed using the "raster output" option that produces an image of the view instead of a "vector output". The image produced has a dimmer aspect on screen when viewed in your pdf. However, the hard copy output, if you print your pdf to a plotter, should look better. This is also the case when you try to print a shaded view.

[Anonymous]

It didn't change anything, same results when PDF printing. It doesn't matter if I put raster or vector processing. Why? Because when you enable Depth Cueing option, Revit sets by itself to raster just before printing the file.

This message pop-ups before printing into PDF file:

So I can't get the result that I want with Depth Cueing. The front of all my elevations looks like thin lines with some fade out at the back.

[aghis_no]

This is exactly what I tried to explain in my last post. I obviously expressed my self poorly. Revit will automatically switch to raster output when a view uses shading, shadows, depth cueing or any other enhancement obtained by the graphic processor and not the object styles. However, the result on paper is generally better than on screen. So no solution, only workarounds. Like the ones toanDN and Rina Sahay suggested.

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for the fast replies. It's my fault, I didn't read clearly your last post.

Conclusion, I'll stay with the old way. 🙂

[EmptySaturnV]

We also have the same problem with depth cue. I was super excited when they released that feature but it still just does not print the way that it should. We ended up just not using it and going the old way as well. I really hope that Autodesk revisits this soon.

[Anonymous]

Yep we have had the same issue with depth cuing in our office as well.  We put some time into testing it out to get it work so that it looked good as a pdf (how plans are generally viewed nowadays) and printed but we could not get either to an acceptable graphic level.  The images should come out at a good quality whether or not they are being rastered; depth cueing/shadows do not help us very much when they only work on our monitors inside of revit.  

I was very excited for this feature, hopefully they keep working on it.

[maYHS8K]

I have the same issue! I was searching for a solution and found this post, but it doesn't seem like it has been solved. If anybody figured out any way around it, please share it with us. Thanks. 

[EmptySaturnV]

I ended up creating a support case with Autodesk about this so they could give a formal answer on it. They gave a workaround that halfway works, but what annoyed me is they consider it as "working as designed" and do not consider it to be a flaw in the program. See the following link for their solution. Knowledge Article

[rosterfeld]

It infuriates me that they claim this to be "working as designed"

See the image... the top one was printed directly to the printer from revit. The bottom one was printed to PDF then printed. The bottom one is distinctly lighter, while the top one is exactly how I want it to print. We send our large prints out to be printed, thus have to print to PDF first.  Autodesk, please find a solution for this. This is unacceptable.

[jmhanbyV4TDM]

I was so excited when I found this feature only to be disappointed to see it prints like crap!  Wish they would fix it.  Any one have solution?  I am trying to use the old way I did it with glass curtainwall and glass transparency but that too doesn't seem to be working now either! I tried linework and that too fails me.  I don't know enough about masses to use that way.

[anggarcia_YC422JQVUX7X]

Yeah, I'm having the same problem, I used to be so excited about depth cueing and promoted it to everyone who cared to listen, until I realized that even the closest elements in my elevation were fading a lot in comparisson to when I deactivate the depth cueing, and according to autodesk "the near slider controls the distance at which the blending starts, so everything in front of this distance will NOT be faded. The view starts at full intensity and fades to the percentage set with the Fade Limit slider" well... it doesn't seem to be the case, cause even at 99% of fade limit, my closest elements are fading out a lot even though they fade less than the further ones... so sad about this, guess I'll have to go back to the old tricks.