PDF printing

[plarchitect]

I am new to osX panther and vw11. When printing to pdf, the drawings are almost unreadable. I have to change my pen thicknesses to 12 to be able to read the drawings. I find it very incovenient. Is there a way around this problem?

[mike m oz]

Something I discovered purely by accident after being very frustrated with the quality of the OS X Panther Save to PDF option on a Mac. (The standard of VW drawings printed this way is very bad with poor linework and lousy colours. In my view it verges on the unuseable.)

The following procedure produces very good results.

- When printing select Output Options and choose Save as File : Postscript. This creates a postscript file. (Do not select the PDF option!)

- Double clicking on this postscript file will open it up in Preview. In doing this Preview converts the PS file to a PDF file.

- Save As a PDF file by just adding .pdf to the file name.

- Do a get info on the file created (Command+I) and change the 'Open With' application to Acrobat Reader

The quality is excellent - the linework is crisp and the colour translation is good.

The only drawback is it can only be done one sheet at a time.

Elsewhere on the NNA site I have read that to use Batch printing you need to purchase Adobe Distiller for OS X so that you can select it as a Printer.

[plarchitect]

Travis the resolution was set to 300 default. However I noticed that instead of opening the file with preview, in the get info changing the "open with" to Acrobat reader as recommended by Mike does the trick. Many thanks to you both.

Paul

[islandmon]

For us the Panther Print2PDF =seamless whether or not we use the GIMP Drivers or native. As noted by Travis , setting the Viewports to 300dpi and works just fine. There may have been a font conflict in the origin PDF and that's why it failed on Preview whereas Acrobat has font substitution per preference( take a look).

Check the VW file fonts.

[Travis]

Be sure to set the resolution to 300 instead of the 360 default. Under Vectorworks in the Print Dialog box.

If you do a search here on the board, you'll find lots of discussion on PDF issues. This one may be helpful: http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=22;t=000445

Here's hoping PDF gets a little extra attention in the next VW update.

Good luck,