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Dashed line types printing as barbed wire?


MattM

Question

When I print drawings my dash or dash-dot line types print as barbed wire.  The lines look correct on the screen and on PDF's, but won't print correctly.  It doesn't happen on every dashed line and I've even tried using the eye dropper to match lines that aren't printing correctly with ones that are and still no luck.  Any idea what might be causing this?  My I.T. guys have re-installed print drivers and can't seem to find an issue outside of the program.  Is there a way to delete the barbed wire line type from the program?  I don't think I'd ever use it on a drawing and it only started happening when we upgraded to 2016.

 

Thanks,

Matt

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1 hour ago, JimW said:

When you export the PDF that looks correct, then attempt to print from the PDF, the same issue occurs? If you export as an Image (PNG format at 300DPI should be fine for testing) does that look correct before/after printing?

Correct Jim.  The PDF's look correct on screen and the issues only occur while printing.  I've tried both "printing" to a PDF as well as "exporting" to a PDF to see if that made a difference and no such luck.  I've also tried printing the PDF's on a colleagues computer and same results (ie dashed lines to barbed wire) even though they have no issues with any line types from VW or PDF files created on their computer. 

 

I just tried exporting as 300 DPI PNG file and it seems to look and print correctly.  Not sure if that helps diagnose the issue or just complicate it further. 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

There may not be a way around that in 2016 in that case. In Vectorworks 2017 we added a Rasterize option to PDF export that resolves issues like this (it effective exports an image embedded into a PDF to bypass any printer compatibility issues similar to what you are seeing) but other than manually exporting to an image in 2016, I do not know of a way around it in that version.
 

Does the PDF print incorrectly from any viewer application? Are you printing the PDF from Adobe Reader, Acrobat, Preview, or another application?

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