topic Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them.. in Documentation

Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Fri, 19 May 2023 20:22:40 GMT

I am trying to lay out a bunch of notes and details on a layout in AC 10, but for some reason the PDF drawing with the notes on it wont plot out, despite it being on a printable layer. Everything else prints fine, just not the PDF imports. Is there some setting that needs to be checked over for this to work?

-=PD=-

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Gerald Hoffman — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:13:22 GMT

I just had something like this happen to me if I read your post correctly. I had made up PLT files to send from the sheets with pdf imports. Some of the sheets were fine and some were missing the pdfs. I finally just made PDF files of the sheets and they were all fine. I don't know what the problem is but this might work as a workaround.

Cheers,

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:32:26 GMT

Are you saying you printed the sheets with PDF imports on them into a PDF format? I had actually tried plotting to a PDF earlier to circumvent the problem, but i had the same result. Everthing done in AC would show up fine, the PDF of the notes i brought in would not be on the sheet.

Our design group is kind of running out of easy options, since the idea to plot stuff out of AutoCAD into a PDF format and bring them into AC that way was the result of massive headaches with directly translating the autocad files.

-=PD=-

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Djordje — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 17:43:17 GMT

Paul wrote:
Are you saying you printed the sheets with PDF imports on them into a PDF format? I had actually tried plotting to a PDF earlier to circumvent the problem, but i had the same result. Everthing done in AC would show up fine, the PDF of the notes i brought in would not be on the sheet.

Our design group is kind of running out of easy options, since the idea to plot stuff out of AutoCAD into a PDF format and bring them into AC that way was the result of massive headaches with directly translating the autocad files.

-=PD=-

What was it exactly that you have tried to do?

What is your OS and version?

Did you try printing?

What was the DWG export problem?

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:36:01 GMT

I had this happen to me too. Only some PDF's wont plot though. Others would plot fine. Not sure why yet. Maybe a version conflict of the PDF?

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:14:08 GMT

I have just had the same issue and wonder if it is related to the last patch. All of my structural drawings are PDF's placed on a layout sheet for output. Previously I had output in this means without incidence. Now those sheets show up blank when output via publisher to a PDF format. I suppose a work around would be to convert all of those PDF's to JPEG, but that does not seem ideal. Please list your platform you are working on and the patch version of Archicad you are running to see is we can narrow this down. I will try to output to a PC I have which I believe does not have the latest patch installed.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 14:55:30 GMT

I have run a few tests to try and resolve this issue. First I tried to embed the PDF files. This had no effect and the output PDF's were still blank. Next I opened the project on a PC which has not been updated with the latest patch (running on version 1010). This corrected my output issues so I have a work around for my immediate needs. I am now hesitant to update my PC with the latest patch. Are there any Mac users running Archicad with the latest patch (1176) who could test this issue? I don't know if it is platform specific so I ask the same question of PC users. If this is a bug it is major and we should get it reported to Graphisoft ASAP.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 15:15:07 GMT

Its very strange. I rendered the PDFs out to JPGs and imported them THAT way, but to the same result. Even the imported JPG imaged wont print on my layout.

BTW: Im running AC 10 1183 on XP Pro

-=PD=-

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:04:26 GMT

I have tried few other tests to try and narrow down this issue. The issue seems to be related to the size of the PDF relative to the printable area of the PDF sheet. If I resize the PDF file such that it is less than the printable area, I get expected output. You can't just "crop" the view but need to resize the drawing. This of course becomes an issue for scaled drawings. This is clearly something new since I was not having these issues before my update to 1176 or my system update to 10.4.9. If I place a smaller PDF file such that it's boundaries fall outside of the the printable area there are no problems. It seems to be directly related to the actual size of the PDF file and the printable area in the layout sheet. Setting the printing margins to zero allowed me to place a sheet and output as intended. I recall a similar issue back in the plotmaker days of having to set the printer margins to zero, but I can't recall all of the specifics. Hopefully this is not an old monster returning to haunt us.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:11:48 GMT

Paul, I noticed that I am not running the most recent patch since you indicated your version as 1183. I think I will download the latest patch and try that out. I don't think I will update my version 1010 on my PC. It is very frustrating when a patch apparently "breaks" something that was working correctly.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 17:02:13 GMT

All of my problematic PDF files were ones that were generated out of Autocad (I assume) by my consultants. These include both structural drawings and California specific title 24 energy calculations. Out of curiosity I brought in a full size PDF that was generated from Archicad and the output problem went away. Next I opened one of the problematic PDF files and re-saved it using the "save as PDF" option internal to the Mac print dialog box and the problem was also solved. I hope some of these methods will help your situation as well. I would like to reiterate (if Graphisoft is listening) that these problems did not exist in the 1010 patch of Archicad and only reared it's ugly head after my update to 1176. Clearly a bug in my eyes.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 19:59:08 GMT

Hm...I wonder what would happen if I brought the PDF into model space and created a layout view from that.... I'll try that out a bit later and report back.

-=PD=-

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:33:05 GMT

Things that I have noted so far- as this has been a really big problem for me and our office lately as well, I have posted numerous times on here too- to little avail.

First - my experience has been that the file size and whether your computer or printer holds the files while printing ( i.e. the memory in your printer/plotter may not hold enough information to print the image)

I read somewhere - That you should be rotating the image before it gets into ArchiCAD- as rotating it in ArchiCAD enlarges the file size of the image.

I have had much better luck publishing to a printer when I have images I need to print. As apposed to just printing or plotting through the file menue.

I have had better luck publishing to PDF rather than just printing to one.

I have also had a PDF made that appears fine, and outside of ArchiCAD if I want to just print my PDF with an image on it- the image does not show up in the printed version ..... That one thoroughly confuses me, as it totally misses the point of a PDF.

I am going to go mess around with trying to get all of the PDFs inside the printable boundaries of a layout and see if this helps me at all, but I have done just a marquee around an Image before and still it will not print.
We do this because my boss likes to see what the Computer drawings look like when laid over his hand sketches.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:17:29 GMT

I have reinstalled archicad and only run the 1010 patch. This restored previous functionality, but I suspect my problems might be multi-faceted. The PDF's I now create are not picking up the page size of the layout. I suspect that the 10.4.9 system upgrade might be the other culprit causing me grief. It was not what I would call a highly productive day

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:20:21 GMT

Jesikuh123 wrote:
I am going to go mess around with trying to get all of the PDFs inside the printable boundaries of a layout and see if this helps me at all, but I have done just a marquee around an Image before and still it will not print.

A marque did not resolve the issue for me. In addition I could not simply crop the placed PDF. The full size of the PDF needs to smaller than the printable boundaries.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

vfrontiers — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 10:33:21 GMT

I continue to have problems PLOTTING pdf's... I generate a fair amount of schedules in EXCEL...(I am working on getting some back into ArchiCAD).. mostly STRUCTURAL schedules... Beam, Header, Shearwall and it is truly hit and miss on whether they will plot!

All of these schedules are produced by using Amyuni drivers. I have used the one provided with ArchiCAD and bought one from Amyuni directly. Beam and Headers will plot on some projects while the Shearwall schedule will not. Right now the only difference is the size of the Shearwall Sched is 11x17 and the other are letter.

If anyone has any ideas or has heard of a confirmed bug report, please pass it along.

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:51:44 GMT

Hm..I've had some problems in the past with using PDF's generated from Amyuni Converter, so Ive been using Adobe. The Amyuni pdfs would slow AC WAAAY down for some reason when i bring them in.

oh, btw: I tried resizing the drawing and cropping them to be smaller then the printable margins. Seems to work ok now! I guess we can use this solution for now...

-=PD=-

Re: Importing PDF drawings and plotting them..

Thomas Allan Palmer — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:12:16 GMT

We cannot get TIFFs or JPEGS to plot. Any suggestions. If we made PDFs they show up.

Thanks