Printing to PDF, thick lines - help!

[Mark Novick]

I'm trying to print out a VW drawing that I did not initially work on, and am having some problem getting the lines to print out where they aren't so thick that they look terrible on the PDF. Please see the attached file. I've tried playing with line weights on everything I can think of, making them thinner and thicker, nothing seems to help. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[bonus]

have you tried exporting pdf instead of printing pdf?

[Pat Stanford]

Have you checked the Resolution settings in the Document Preferences? Could it be set to the default 72 dpi that would look blocky.

Pat

[Guest]

I would bet the actual line weights are heavy. You may not notice this on the screen depending on how you have the Zoom Line Thickness VectorWorks Preference set.

Have you checked the actual pen weight of the objects? Is the pen weight a thick pen weight?

[Mark Novick]

Ok, changing from printing to PDF to exporting a PDF seems to have done the trick, it looks MUCH better now.

As for Katie's question, no, the line weights were set to class defaults, which were .02mm. It is possible items within groups/symbols had heavier weights that were being used. In any case, going to export PDF fixed it.

This brings me to another question - is there any way to change the line weight of a lighting position in Spotlight? It seems that once it has been set (unless it is set to use the class weight) and converted to a lighting position, there is no way to change it without recreating the lighting position.

[klinzey]

The lighting position use symbols for the geometry. If you look in the resource browser you can edit the symbol and adjust any attributes you would like.

[bonus]

There is a quicker way to edit symbols than in the resource browser.

Just double-click the symbol and the edit window opens. But editing a symbol changes this symbol for good and wherever you used it in the document.

In the browser though, you can create a duplicate symbol with a new name first.