The minimum thickness of the lines, when exported as PDF, is 0.085, not 0.025.

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

*Edit: I tried exporting from Autocad to PDF as a test. The line thicknesses are respected. Even the minimum thickness of Autocad, 0.05 mm is exported correctly (it becomes 0.047...). So it's a problem with Revit or my Revit.

Good morning.
I am exporting a plan view in vector format as a PDF. I created the various thicknesses from "line thicknesses", based on the scale. I realised that in PDF Revit does not export lines with the minimum thickness, 0.025; not even 0.026, 0.027, etc. The minimum thickness of the lines, when exported as PDF, is 0.085.
Does this only happen to me? Can I solve it somehow?
Thank you.

[barthbradley]

Are you saying the PDF line weights are different from what from what your Project Line Weights show? 

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

Yes, It is. The PDF line weights are different. *I use metres as my unit of measurement, so the lines are in millimetres (mm). The minimum thickness in Revit is 0.025 mm.

[ToanDN]

How do your measure the line thicknesses from a PDF?

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

I opened it in Illustrator and Autocad to check.

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

Does anyone have any suggestions? I use Revit 2024.
I tried exporting from Autocad to PDF as a test. The line thicknesses are respected. Even the minimum thickness of Autocad, 0.05 mm is exported correctly (it becomes 0.047...). So it's a problem with Revit or my Revit.

Thank you.

[SteveKStafford]

Try a different PDF printer driver. PDF is a term like "Kleenex" these days...but one PDF is not equal to another, depending on the driver heavily.

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

Thank you. I tried 'export' and printing with Adobe and Microsoft PDFs.

[SteveKStafford]

...and... no change? It worked?

[Lachlan-JWP]

You can try the Diroots print plug-in as well. it uses a third-party PDF exporter which could help.

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

It doesen't work.

[SteveKStafford]

Long story short, .076 mm is the minimum line thickness that Revit will create despite allowing us to enter a smaller value in the line weights dialog.

FWIW, using drafting by hand with pens as my frame of reference, the thinnest ink pen I used to use, many years ago now, drafting on vellum and mylar was .13 mm. Modern printers are capable of lighter line weights these days but I could barely use my .13 mm pen without snapping off the tip at some point during the day. It was easier on mylar and murder on vellum.

You seek a line weight of .025 mm. I did a quick look at a set of Staedtler pens on Amazon and the smallest I found on offer is .05 mm. Still thinner than the .076 mm that Revit will produce but I can't imagine trying to draft with it. The .13 mm pen is like a "tree trunk" compared to .05 mm 🙂

I'd set up a sampling of lines using the range of pen thickness you can generate from Revit and see if working from the .076 mm thickness "up" can still generate sufficient graphic difference in your drawings to keep everyone happy. I believe you'll find you can. When I set up line weights in a new template I usually temporarily change the project units for length to MM long enough to enter values that correspond to ink pens and we used to do all our drafting with four maybe five pens.

Good luck!

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

It is very strange that you can choose 0.025 as the thickness, but it is then not exported. Thank you for your reply. I would like to share this post where Revit engineers can see it, do you know how I could do this?

[f.annoscia1XRNMD]

Thank you. I downloaded it, but it didn't work.

[SteveKStafford]

There are a number of articles, posts etc you can find if you search but this one is from Autodesk, so it's a formal acknowledgment of what I wrote.