topic Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets in Documentation

PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Fri, 19 May 2023 20:19:49 GMT

Aloha,
i have placed a pdf 'drawing' onto a layout sheet, it looks fine.
Yet when i go to print nothing prints, even if i go to print as a pdf,
i get a blank page.

thanks in advance for the secret,
dean johnston

pc / windows xp pro v 2002
sp 3
4GB ram
dual intel Xeon 2.66

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Thomas Holm — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:28:33 GMT

Archicad version?

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:59:00 GMT

We've had this major problem too. It's actually to do with the process between ArchiCAD data output to print language translation before hardcopy print.
Best to avoid including .pdf's into your layouts.

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:18:53 GMT

In archicad 10, if you have a rotated pdf on your layout, it wont print, not here on my Swedish ArchiCad 10, haven't tried on AC 11 / 12 though.

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets in ArchiCAD 11

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:39:09 GMT

I'm working in Archicad 11 all updated

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets in ArchiCAD 11

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:54:42 GMT

Dean wrote:
I'm working in Archicad 11 all updated

And the pdf isn't rotated?

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:00:26 GMT

I thought this was supposed to be better in version 12. It is worse than ever! I cannot put a pdf in a layout sheet, my plotter will just print a bit of the pdf and then cut the whole sheet, won't print any title block or anything else that i have on the sheet. I can take the same pdfs change them to tiff or jpg s which make the file much larger and not as clear but it will print and or plot. Much hate in my heart!

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:07:57 GMT

Just curious, can you still save your problem drawings as .pdf?

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:51:31 GMT

Dean/Charlee/Gary et al,

What are the specs of the printer you are sending it to? It sounds more like the printer is running out of memory and can't process the whole document.

We have an old HP 450C A1 printer in the office which is getting on for 12 years old which struggles with any large complex files sent to it. Anything with graphics on or a particularly complicated floorplan causes bits to not print properly and sometimes it just fails completely!

Thankfully there is an option in the printer set up that allows the print to be processed by the computer, and not the printer, which seems to solve the problem. Could there be a similar option for your machines, and does it make any difference?

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:46:20 GMT

We're running Xerox 510 A0 printers
The problem occurs less frequently now since the upgrade but still occasionally happens.
Processing print via computer works everytime but spool size and processing time is dramatically increased.
Better than having no drawing at all I suppose. 😃
I would still recommend avoiding including pdfs into ArchiCAD drawing layouts.

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:26:49 GMT

/bump

Has anybody found a resolution to this issue with PDFs not printing from layout books? I have found that printing smaller PDFs on the layout books seem to work out fine but anything in the larger size (24x36) either A) does not plot at all B) fails to even send to my plotter.

The only resolution that I have found is saving the layout page as it's own PDF and then printing out that particular page using Adobe Acrobat. This is an extra step that I wish I could do without since I would like to plot directly from the ArchiCAD layout books.

Any new information would be wonderful, thanks!

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Thomas Holm — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 23:57:56 GMT

Version, platform in signature?

Did you do a search? (this was discussed just a couple of days ago)

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:05:35 GMT

AC 11, Windows Vista

I did not see anything posted in the last couple days about this topic... at least in this particular index...

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:34:10 GMT

I think this was the thread Thomas was refering to -

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=140382

A search for "Print PDF" brought it up.

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Thomas Holm — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:10:09 GMT

General advice:

0 Check that your Archicad is updated to the most recent build.

1 Publish to PDF instead of printing directly, if possible.

2 If you're using a cheap printer without built-in Postscript, Publish to PDF and print it from Adobe reader using the Advanced: Print As Picture option.

3 Do the transformations (rotate, scale, crop, overlay etc) of your PDFs in another program (illustrator, Acrobat Pro, Preview) before placing them into Archicad.

4 If it still doesn't work, use a photo editor (like Photoshop) to make a bitmapped picture (tiff or jpeg) of the PDF, apply your transformations, and place the image (picture tool) in Archicad. Take care to do it at the final output resolution and it will keep its quality.

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:44:24 GMT

hp 5500 plotter.

Re: PDF's not printing on Layout Sheets

Thomas Holm — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:57:33 GMT

Gary wrote:
hp 5500 plotter.

I don't know if this is an answer to the above issues, or another question?
My guess is the latter. The HP 5500 is a fine inkjet printer, but while being large, it shares the issues with smaller, cheaper ones. Just 128 MB standard memory, and no built-in Postscript. (I don't know if it's possible to add later). Check that you have the latest drivers.

My recommendation is the same:Publish your Archicad output to a PDF, and print that using Adobe Reader's Print As Picture option.