"Lines Merge" in PDF from Revit?

[pdent1]

I know this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find a solution so here goes.  When using a CAD underlay in halftone and printing to PDF, the underlay consistently overwrites coincident linework in our plans, even if the linework is vastly different in thickness or dash length.  I have Acrobat 2016 Pro and Bluebeam Revu Standard (not the CAD version which gives you access to "Create PDF" in Add-Ins but is much more expensive) and have not found an option in either driver similar to the "lines merge" setting which we used to use in Autocad.  This is really impacting the legibility of our drawings.  Has anyone found a solution?  Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[ToanDN]

If you have Bluebeam then you can turn on Line Merge when print to PDF.  The dialog below should appear after you click OK from the Revit print dialog.

[pdent1]

Thank you ToanDN for your response. I do not see that dialog when printing to the Bluebeam driver. Do you know if there is a setting to turn it on?

[ToanDN]

Do you see Advanced button down bottom right of the window?  Click it.

[pdent1]

I figured out how to get to the setting to create a Save As dialog.  It is in Bluebeam Administrator, not in the print dialog or the printer properties.  Thanks for steering me in the right direction.  Unfortunately the setting does not appear to work.  I notice there are many options for the line merge setting.  Is there one that works better?  I have tried Normal and Darken and got this both times--no change from Adobe driver.  (Our linework can be clearly seen in Revit under the grey dashed line.)

[ToanDN]

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@pdent1 wrote:

I figured out how to get to the setting to create a Save As dialog.  It is in Bluebeam Administrator, not in the print dialog or the printer properties.  Thanks for steering me in the right direction.  Unfortunately the setting does not appear to work.  I notice there are many options for the line merge setting.  Is there one that works better?  I have tried Normal and Darken and got this both times--no change from Adobe driver.  (Our linework can be clearly seen in Revit under the grey dashed line.)

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I use Multiply.

[pdent1]

Again Toan, I appreciate your responses.  But I tried Multiply with no change.  Any other ideas?

[ToanDN]

Did you link the CAD file in with or without the option [Current view only] ticked?

[pdent1]

Without.  It is a single civil file which spans across four buildings and a dozen ground floor plan views.

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@ToanDN wrote:
Did you link the CAD file in with or without the option [Current view only] ticked?

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[ToanDN]

Attached are two PDFs with and without Line Merge.  There are nothing more I can offer.

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @pdent1

Can you share a file and a journal to investigate further? @ToanDN has pointed you in the right direction but looks like there is some kind of behavior that is causing this to occur in your model.

A couple of questions to better understand this issue:

• Have you checked your graphics card for compatibility with your Revit versions and updated to latest drivers?
• Is this issue specific to a model, have you seen this before?  Are there always linked Revit files? Does the problem stop if there is no Link?
• User-specific? have you tried in another user profile?
• Any windows settings/ version? multiple monitors? remote desktop printing?
• Is Acrobat or pdf reader open when printing?
• Have you been able to reproduce this with other pdf printers?
• Double check is that your machine is not running out of RAM - this would very significantly affect the performance of printing.

Looking forward to your reply update.

Regards,

[pdent1]

Hi Vivenka.  Thanks for jumping in here, I really appreciate it.  Answers to your questions are as follows:

Can you share a file and a journal to investigate further?  If you mean the Revit file itself, probably not.  It is over 500MB in size, not containing CAD and Revit links, and contains intellectual property my boss would not want me to share.

Have you checked your graphics card for compatibility with your Revit versions and updated to latest drivers?  The card is a Nvidia P4000. It is not specifically listed as compatible, but it was a Dell suggestion for what is a pretty high powered workstation. Driver is up to date.
Is this issue specific to a model, have you seen this before? Are there always linked Revit files? Does the problem stop if there is no Link?  The problem has always existed when we were using the Adobe PDF driver. We haven't had Bluebeam for that long, but we bought it partly in the hope it would solve the problem. To be clear, this occurs with linked CAD in halftone, not linked Revit.  We always have linked CAD files, usually civil and landscape at a minimum. Obviously if there is no link, there is no conflict and the linework appears normally.

One wildcard is that the linked civil CAD file has its basepoint a thousand miles away, and this means that their linework (including the line which obscures our linework in the images above) as viewed in Revit is squiggly.  I've posted on this forum about that too, but it appears very difficult to fix and the civil engineer refuses to change their basepoint. But this issue is independent of this. A landscape link with no squiggles does the same.

User-specific? have you tried in another user profile?  I just tried it on a completely different workstation (with an Autodesk approved graphics card) and the problem persists.
Any windows settings/ version?  Win 10, other user is Win7 multiple monitors? yes remote desktop printing? no
Is Acrobat or pdf reader open when printing? No
Have you been able to reproduce this with other pdf printers?  Yes, Acrobat Pro produces identical results. Of course there is no "lines merge" setting.
Double check is that your machine is not running out of RAM - this would very significantly affect the performance of printing.  No.  This is a very capable workstation with 16gb RAM. As I say, the problem persists across workstations in our office.

I also submitted a ticket to Bluebeam yesterday but haven't heard back yet.  Thanks again for your help.

[cbcarch]

Just to add a bit here....

16 GB of RAM is not much. Not sure it is directly related to your printing/graphics issues ( that could be more of a GPU / display / graphics card problem.) But--if you are working on large/complex jobs, you should consider adding more RAM--say 32 GB or even 64 GB. Good news is that RAM is much less expensive than it was a few years ago. Don't spare the $ on RAM--speaking from years of experience on large/complex projects in Revit.

Also, having a Cad Link w/ Origin too far away is a known issue with graphics problems. You could try doing a Save-As of the engineer's Cad file , move the Origin, and Link it in as a test.

[pdent1]

I'm sure you're right.  I agree, it probably doesn't affect this issue though.  RAM is still expensive from Dell 🙂 but not so much to add afterwards.

[pdent1]

Oh, and modifying the engineer's file is not really an option, because they are continually updating it and it is too much work to do over and over again. The origin is literally in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's a bummer for sure.