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Has anyone mastered getting reliable pdf files from VW drawings? We use .pdf regularly to send files from AutoCAD - works pretty much without a hitch. But on VW (using Acrobat Professional 7.0), I get the following problems:

Text does not print at all

My title block doesn't print

Drawing bounds are shifted from the on-screen representation of the sheet

Other than that, a lot of elements do show up. I've had success with 8.5 x 11 drawings, but on architectural sheets it doesn't work.

VW 10.5.1

Win 2k

768 MB RAM

[ 10-06-2005, 08:01 PM: Message edited by: P Retondo ]

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We're Mac-based, so our experience may not translate perfectly. We create .pdf (using Acrobat Pro 7.01) files from VW on a daily basis and rarely have a problem. Certainly none of the ones you mention.

One complaint I often have is the size of the file. If I'm sending it for review (rather than accurate output on the other end), I'll often take the two-step process of printing to postscript (.ps) and then having Acrobat Distiller convert the .ps to .pdf. This results in very small files.

Sorry, I'm not much real help.

Good luck,

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Well, I'm Mac based also, and the pdfs work pretty well.

One thing that may be an issue for you- as it is for me- is that the document page is set to the printable area implicit in the driver selected under page set-up. For example under the standard driver for my Epson 1290 the margin on the RHS is larger than LHS- I don't know why. Printing to pdf will then result in a shift to the left compared to how the document appears. To avoid this I select the printer driver for "no margin" under page set up, and make sure the page size under menu/page/Set Print Area.. is correct.

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Good point David - one I wish I'd made.

Paolo, the Reduce File Size you mention will often reduce a file 10 ?20%. From 5.3mb to 4.5mb, for example. Going the route I mention will create a 1.1mb file of the same sheet. The difference is impressive. But, I believe, the result is NOT vector-based so the output can't be scaled very well on the other end.

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I have been able to output up to an Architectural C sheet without a problem. D size doesn't work. I can .pdf the full sheet on a B format at 50%, perfectly. The workaround I'm currently using for D sheets is to output a plot file using a plotter driver, and convert to .pdf using Acrobat Distiller.

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quote:

Originally posted by michael john williams:

We are pc based and do not have the full version of acrobat and so we usually save the VW drawing as an image or use vw viewer, but I think save as / import / export pdf should be added to the wish list.

I'm amazed to see this post, considering the lengthy reply I gave to you on pdf creation some months ago.

Could you not be bothered to read it. Creating pdf's is used through the printing dialog because the pdf creator is installed, just the same as a printer.

I even gave you the name of a reliable, and now much used by other vectorworkers, program which is totally free.

Prints up to AO sized pdf's easliy, in fact I created and sent some only last week to my local printer via email, drove down to the shop and they were ready waiting for me. Clients get them all the time and view or print out using Acrobat Reader, and it even reduces to fit their printer/page size.

Your comment for need to add export to pdf to the wish list shows you still do not understand the principals of pdf creation and why you could and should be using them. VW Viewer is simply not required unless the need to view the file in its VW state.

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Apparently the larger sized formats have given some difficulty when converting to .pdf's in the past. Only with Acrobat version 7.0 has it worked well with AutoCAD, and Acrobat seems to have worked together with Autodesk to make this happen. Version 7.0 is advertised as supporting conversion of AutoCAD drawings.

From where I sit, it would seem that VW has some work to do to make Acrobat work properly, at least on the PC platform. The shareware alanmac refers to looks like a good idea, but when I downloaded it I couldn't find a convenient .pdf markup set of tools - we do that a lot to process shop drawing submittals.

I still haven't heard from anyone on the PC platform about their experiences with Acrobat - has anyone seen and (hopefully?) solved the problems I described above?

By the way, we use .pdf's not only to send files to be output for drawings sets, and for transmittals to contractora and consultants - we also use them to archive the drawing set at various stages of a project. The .pdf's are unaffected by changes in workgroup references (xrefs in ACAD world), and take up little memory on the hard drive.

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Seen - yes. Solved - no.

I had some of those and some other problems writing pdf's from Acrobat Pro on PC's, tore my hair out over it but couldn't get it to work.

pdf995 worked immediately and flawlessly for me. I think I just had to change a setting to make it download fonts into the pdf file by default.

Couldn't you create the pdf file from VW with pdf995 and then mark it up using Acrobat?

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I've used both MAC's and PC's to generate reliable pdf drawings. There have been some instances where the drawings showed up without text in title blocks and other places. In my experience the following has ALWAYS been true when this has happened:

The page being printed has been one that has an extraordianary amount of excess complexity (ie, I've converted a perspective line drawing into lines or something to that effect), or my print output resolution has been too high (300 is fine for prints, why go higher?).

My understanding is that Acrobat, when forced to take up large amounts of resources to emulate a print, will "dump" the page after it maxes out the resources allocated. Correcting one of the two above situations recitfies this problem.

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quote:

Originally posted by Travis:

One complaint I often have is the size of the file. If I'm sending it for review (rather than accurate output on the other end)


Hey was just reading in Tiger the new print to pdf options can be automator scripts. One of them installed as standard is a compressed PDF which is good for the review prints...

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Grant, thanks, that was the key. I thought I had tested lower resolution output by editing my "standard" file settings to 300 dpi, but apparently it only works to modify the resolution in the "Paper/Quality - Advanced" tab. The default was 1200 dpi - by changing that down to 600 dpi, I could output a .pdf successfully.

[ 10-10-2005, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: P Retondo ]

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Alan

Sorry if you think i did not listern to you but all I was saying was how we creat images rather than pdfs. It is quicker and built in and it would good if pdf import eaxport was part of VW like dwg and image. I am not an IT expert but will check out your link to the free pdf software given in:

Writing 2D drawings to PDF

Incidentially not to me.

By the way we do finder the viewer useful as it allows other pcs in the office to view, measure and print drawings without a full licence.

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Michael

You don't have to be an IT expert. If you have printers of any sort in your office, then its as simple as installing the software for one of those, no I tell a lie, even easier.

I had to reformat my hard disc (Windows- ggrrr)

and reinstall my software last week. Once downloaded from the pdf995 site the software was installed by simply unzipping.

Of course, as with any software you will have to look at the settings, but that's so if you wanted to print to a physical printer, or indeed export to your jpeg, bitmap export option.

It really is a "no-brainer" as they say, and provided you watch and do not tick options like the "fit image to page size" type options when in Acrobat Reader you'll get correct scale drawings every time.

I don't know how you ensure the jpeg image is to any given scale when exporting, gave up on that jaggy line big file (compared to pdf) output years ago.

I'm no IT guy, far from it - I just want to plug the stuff in and get work done !! My Mac in the office has even more appeal after last weeks episode.

Alan

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Michael

Don't forget to download the pdfedit program as well, part of the "Suite" which will allow you to combine several pdf's into a multipage pdf.

So you could have a complete proposal as one pdf document, all your plans, quotes, and other documents as one easy to send and read pdf.

It combines pdf's but you don't lose the original documents, it just makes combined copies.

As you are aware for a small sum you can remove the sponser pages from appearing, but its never annoyed me unduely.

Alan

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