weird situation as follows.. happens in ACAD 2005 & also in 2006:
when plotting to PDF from paper or model space, solidly hatched areas appear crisscrossed with thousands of tiny white lines, some dotted, some dashed, u-name-it.
interestingly, this also happens with other people's drawings such as dxf city plans etc..
it's very strange that none of the ghost-lines show up in Acad itself, only the pdf output is affected.
tried using alternative pdf writers, same shit happens.
what's going on??
i read in another thread that having hatches on layer 0 is no good and corrupts the drawing.. but when moving the hatches to a dedicated layer, the problem still persists.
is it a PDF problem?
been fooling around with this problem for days- any help would be appreciated!
how large are the pdfs, file size and sheet size? typically our plotter does not plot large formatted sheets well at all. our 11x17 printers have no problems. i have found that it appears that plotter memory is the issue here, as our print house - when we send pdf plot files for large runs - has no issues plotting pdfs.
unfortunately, the problem occurs one step before a physical plot is made: the zig-zag lines appear in the pdf file.
i select "adobe pdf" as the plot device, set up the sheet and plot to file- voilà , strangeness ensues. sheet sizes are A1 and above; the dwg files i export are usually around half a MB in size.
i suspect there is a problem with the interplay of the adobe pdf print-to-file device and ACAD; when saving as dwg, which some print houses accept but not all too many in my area, the strangle line-things don't show up.
also, when importing the seemingly bungled original dwg file into another application such as VectorWorks, the lines don't show up and everything seems in order. exporting to pdf from these other apps works just fine.
humm! :)
.. thinking about trying my luck with one of the commercially available dwg2pdf converters..
I have always had great results creating .pdf's (and .jpg’s, tiff’s, etc.) by first creating a full size HP/GL-2 plot (.plt) file and then converting the plot file using a cheap aftermarket program like View Companion.
I also frequently use the free Cute PDF (ghost system printer) program to make .pdf’s through any application that prints.
I think that those 'anomalies' have always happened in every Autocad version--I still work on Autocad 2000 and they always happen to me. From what I know (and this is kind of funny) is that they only show up on the screen: when printing out any of these pdfs, you will see that solid hatches are printed as solid hatches--no weird 'anomalies' whatsoever.
If you are planning on showing the pdfs on the screen and you want to get rid of those 'anomalies,' you can always convert the solid hatches into dot hatches and play with the dot density. That may look closer to what you are expecting. The autocad drawing will be heavier though ...
raton- the stuff does show up when printed, unfortunately.. the workaround right now is to import dwg into VectorWorks and export pdfs from there. bulky and overloaded process, but works.
bula- will try some of the additional programs; ePrint created the same errors, perhaps some of the others will do the trick.
had none of the hatch problems when working with dwf files, but when printing to pdf from the dwf viewer, same madness all over again.
will keep you updated once i tracked this down :)
Jul 17, 05 3:22 pm ·
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ACAD hatch madness
dear folks,
weird situation as follows.. happens in ACAD 2005 & also in 2006:
when plotting to PDF from paper or model space, solidly hatched areas appear crisscrossed with thousands of tiny white lines, some dotted, some dashed, u-name-it.
interestingly, this also happens with other people's drawings such as dxf city plans etc..
it's very strange that none of the ghost-lines show up in Acad itself, only the pdf output is affected.
tried using alternative pdf writers, same shit happens.
what's going on??
i read in another thread that having hatches on layer 0 is no good and corrupts the drawing.. but when moving the hatches to a dedicated layer, the problem still persists.
is it a PDF problem?
been fooling around with this problem for days- any help would be appreciated!
cheers from berlin,
max
how large are the pdfs, file size and sheet size? typically our plotter does not plot large formatted sheets well at all. our 11x17 printers have no problems. i have found that it appears that plotter memory is the issue here, as our print house - when we send pdf plot files for large runs - has no issues plotting pdfs.
unfortunately, the problem occurs one step before a physical plot is made: the zig-zag lines appear in the pdf file.
i select "adobe pdf" as the plot device, set up the sheet and plot to file- voilà , strangeness ensues. sheet sizes are A1 and above; the dwg files i export are usually around half a MB in size.
i suspect there is a problem with the interplay of the adobe pdf print-to-file device and ACAD; when saving as dwg, which some print houses accept but not all too many in my area, the strangle line-things don't show up.
also, when importing the seemingly bungled original dwg file into another application such as VectorWorks, the lines don't show up and everything seems in order. exporting to pdf from these other apps works just fine.
humm! :)
.. thinking about trying my luck with one of the commercially available dwg2pdf converters..
graphics card? memory?
GeForce4 Ti4200, 1 gig RAM, win2k on a p4 1.8 ghz.
many thanks for taking the time, beta!
No fix here...but…
I have always had great results creating .pdf's (and .jpg’s, tiff’s, etc.) by first creating a full size HP/GL-2 plot (.plt) file and then converting the plot file using a cheap aftermarket program like View Companion.
I also frequently use the free Cute PDF (ghost system printer) program to make .pdf’s through any application that prints.
I think that those 'anomalies' have always happened in every Autocad version--I still work on Autocad 2000 and they always happen to me. From what I know (and this is kind of funny) is that they only show up on the screen: when printing out any of these pdfs, you will see that solid hatches are printed as solid hatches--no weird 'anomalies' whatsoever.
If you are planning on showing the pdfs on the screen and you want to get rid of those 'anomalies,' you can always convert the solid hatches into dot hatches and play with the dot density. That may look closer to what you are expecting. The autocad drawing will be heavier though ...
Hope it helps ...
thanks for your input, everyone!
raton- the stuff does show up when printed, unfortunately.. the workaround right now is to import dwg into VectorWorks and export pdfs from there. bulky and overloaded process, but works.
bula- will try some of the additional programs; ePrint created the same errors, perhaps some of the others will do the trick.
had none of the hatch problems when working with dwf files, but when printing to pdf from the dwf viewer, same madness all over again.
will keep you updated once i tracked this down :)
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