Work arounds for PDF exports bugs?

Joe Dunfee

It has become apparent that the PDF export feature has the same bugs in v14 as it did back in v11.  E.g.;

• Circles in model space get filled in.
• Tabs are printed in the order they were originally created, and not their current order.
• Page orientation does not follow the layout settings, and will change even if all tabs have the same orientation.

The only solution I have found so far, is to print each tab to a PDF printer driver.  But, this has its own limitations.  I.e. the layer information is lost, and I must manually create each page and append it to the PDF file.  I can accept the loss of layer information, but really want to eliminate the manual creation of each page.

I tried sheet sets, but then the printer driver prompts me for each page save name. Since these windows come up in rapid succession, it is a challenge to click them in the proper sequence to maintain the original page sequence.

Does anyone else have their own work around, to create a single PDF with each of the layout tabs?

-Joe Dunfee

John Gaunt

Can't offer much except the printer driver I use offers to name each sheet with the file name + the layout name, which is usually what I want.

Preserving layers might be a help if someone had a PDFtoDWG utility which made use of layers - mine doesn't.

The PDF program (PDFxchange) can combine files, but I never do it because clients always want them separate.

The only annoying thing is, it tries to send PDF's to My Documents until the destination is changed at the start of each session.

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Regarding the filled circles:
I think this is really a lineweight issue and that very large circles will not appear filled in.
- Check the page setup for the Model space tab (CTB/STB file).
- Check the PdfUsePlotStyles setting.

Joe Dunfee

Thanks for the guess on the Use Plot Styles option Roy. But I just tried it, and got the same behavior with the circle being filled in both and without the box checked. 

Note that in this case, I am creating a circle on layer 0 with only the default lineweight.  A line on the same layer does not show a thickness problem.

I will mention another minor difference between circles in paperspace vs modelspace. The modelspace ones are quite "chunky".  I.e. they are drawn like hexagons, rather than smooth circles.  I think Viewres may be one thing to try for that, but my desire to randomly try a lot of settings has run out.

-Joe Dunfee

Joe Dunfee

Another test I just did was to make a small break in the circle. I did this for a few items, but I have hundreds of circles, so it is not a true solution.

-Joe Dunfee

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Here is some Lisp code to 'hardcode' the layout taborder:
[code](defun c:LayoutHardOrder ( / lenTmp nameList tmp)
  (setq tmp (rtos (getvar 'cdate) 2 8))
  (setq lenTmp (strlen tmp))
  (setq nameList
    (mapcar
      'cdr
      (vl-sort
        (mapcar
          '(lambda (layoutObject)
            (cons (vla-get-taborder layoutObject) (vla-get-name layoutObject))
          )
          (vle-collection->list
            (vla-get-layouts (vla-get-activedocument (vlax-get-acad-object)))
          )
        )
        '(lambda (a b) (< (car a) (car b)))
      )
    )
  )
  (setvar 'tilemode 1)
  (foreach name nameList
    (if (/= (strcase name) "MODEL")
      (progn
        (setvar 'cmdecho 0)
        (command
          "_.layout" "_copy" name (strcat tmp name)
          "_.layout" "_delete" name
          "_.layout" "_rename" (strcat tmp name) name
        )
        (setvar 'cmdecho 1)
      )
    )
  )
  (princ)
)[/code]

Roy Klein Gebbinck

Hmm, I see that the lenTmp variable in the code is actually never used...

Joe Dunfee

Wow Roy, that was fast.  Thank you very much. Your lisp program worked very well.

I may yet be able to stay with BricsCAD if I can solve the filled circle problem.  And from another thread I started, I should repeat here that large circles are not filled. But, it is not related to line weight.  Breaking a circle using the break command will restore it to displaying normally.

And yet another piece of the page rotation problem.  If I put a check at "Zoom to Extents" in the export options, the page override trick works.  However, they are no longer at my original scale.  If I unchecked the "zoom to extents" option, then my page sizes will, for some tabs in the PDF they change to letter sized in portrait orientation.

-Joe Dunfee

Jason Bourhill

Hi Joe,

I assume that you have raised a support request on your issues? The forum is great for getting work around, but it's not going to provide a fix.

In terms of your circles. are they at an elevation other than 0? Or is the view point not plan? Perhaps something like this is causing the export to shade them?

If you are happy to compromise on printing to PDF you could try PDFcreator. You allows you to collect print jobs in the queue, which allows you to choose whether you combine or save individual pdfs. I assume you are using the _PUBLISH command to print multi-sheet drawings in one go, rather than each tab individually.

There are loads of PDF applications around for working with PDFs, most over a way to combine PDFs by selecting them in windows explorer. I've been trialling Foxit Phantom , it has an interesting feature of being able to scan the pdf and make the text searchable.

You could also use DWG TrueView, which has a built in PDF printer, and will also include layer info.

Personally I don't really like having to use _EXPORT to generate 2D PDF / DWF , these should be accessible as an option from the Print dialogue, along with any options related to their output, such as including layer information.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

Joe Dunfee

I did a support ticket back in version 11, so they have it.

The link to the download on the PDFCreator site is flagged by my Norton as not safe and it automatically deleted it from my computer.  It is not the actual program, but rather is an "Installer".

But, thanks for the idea.  Perhaps there is another PDF program that will accept all the prints into a cue.

-Joe Dunfee

Joe Dunfee

Does Foxit Phantom accept the prints into a cue?

-Joe Dunfee

Jason Bourhill

Hi Joe,

Yes PDFCreator does set off anti-virus. I use Nod32, which doesn't stop me from download and install, but does block some of the calls made by the installer to load other unrelated websites and installer. PDFCreator is free, it is paid for by them embedding links to other apps and advertisement into the installer. It this that sets of the ant-virus, which is a pity because it is quite a good PDF printing application.

They do another application called PDFArchitect this uses a different approach, perhaps this also includes PDFCreator with the installer? I found PDFArchitect to be quite good, my only annoyance was that it was slow to startup.

I don't know of any other PDF printers that have a queue feature (no Foxit Phantom doesn't). However there are command line based utilities around to combine and split PDFs. Possibly you could use one of these to combine PDFs after printing using a batch/script.

Raised support request in V11? I would raise another to give them a reminder.

Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

Rakesh Rao

Hi Jason,

You mentioned about command-line based utilities to split/join PDF files. Can you suggest/recommend one such utility if you know of one? That was a requirement one of our clients had some time back and I think it will help them.

Best Regards
Rakesh

Anthony Apostolaros

Acrobat is expensive, but it's a good editor and it comes with a good PDF printer, Adobe PDF. We set up that as the printer for all tabs, then publish the DWG file, and then select all the PDF files in Windows Explorer and right-click to combine them into a single file. Before combining, there's a window that lets you drag the files around to get them in the right order. And it's easy to delete a page later and replace it with a newer version, or to crop or rotate individual pages or all of them at once.

Does anyone know how to make Bricscad's publish command print only some of the tabs? I can't find any way to do that.

Jason Bourhill

@ Rakesh,
Nice to hear from you, hope things are well where you are. Try PDFtk

@ Anthony
in _PUBLISH you can add and remove sheets by using the buttons on the top right of the sheet list. See attached screen grab. Note that you can also sort your sheets by picking on the column headings.


Regards,

Jason Bourhill

CAD Concepts

PublishRemoveSheets.png

Joe Dunfee

There are quite a large number of PDF creators around.  The challenge is knowing which one will meet our needs.

One I used years ago was PDF-Xchange, from www.tracker-software.com. They offer a number of products.  One is a free viewer that allows you to do the mark-ups, for which you normally need the paid Adobe editor. Their PDF creator programs start at around $25, and do offer consolidation.

My recollection from years ago, was that it did require some user interaction, more than I wanted to do.  But, that was years ago, and I am sure it has changed to some extent since then.

-Joe