Weird PDFbehavior in Leopard

[Rick Thompson]

I say in Leopard, but it might not be. I normally do my own printing.. plotting actually. Sometimes I will send PDF's off somewhere to be printed. Today a printer called and the sheet numbers were gone, along with some shading (not sure the extent?). PLT files are fine however. I started checking, and there are no sheet numbers printing to the pdf.

This is what I do know, and it is weird. The Autotext sheet number is part on the sheet, part off. It has been for years. It is the only way I can position the number to show up. See screen shot. If I drag it completely on the sheet it show up on the pdf (but not where it needs to be). If I screw around enough dragging it about... on and off... I can eventually put it back where it was and the pdf will show the sheet number. But, it takes that dragging around a bit, trial and error, before it works. I can save the file, reopen and it seems to still work.

What the ^$%#@@?

[Karl Ottenstein]

Just a guess as to one thing to try for the autotext: is the anchor (of the 9-point anchor interface) for the autotext on the sheet?

Karl

[Richard Morrison]

Have you tried the layout nos. with a centered anchor point? Although I'm not on a Mac, my text seems pretty stable in that same location, even though the Autotext extends beyond the page. I think Karl has it right.

Also, any difference between LayoutID and LayoutNo?

[Rick Thompson]

I'm not at that computer, but I am 99% sure the anchor was on it to begin with. I even set up a new Autotext in the middle of the sheet with something else to be entered, and when I did that the sheet number showed up! Without touching it. That's what made me realize this is not something logical.

I have not tried a center anchor, but I will try that. I did try justifying the text to a different position, but that made no difference. It is just weird. Why does it work after arbitrarily dragging it around, only to put it back to basically the same position????

The moral though, and this is the main reason I posted this, is to check you pdf's before sending them

thanks for the suggestions

[Rick Thompson]

Karl wrote:
Just a guess as to one thing to try for the autotext: is the anchor (of the 9-point anchor interface) for the autotext on the sheet?

Karl

Very good guess. I had the bottom left as the anchor, and switching it to the top left fixed it. It was just barely off, so when I dragged it around, I must have put it back just on the sheet.

Now, can you figure out why the printer is having a hard tie getting it to scale properly? I can print it here, and it scales just right. The City or Atlanta bounced the permit as the scale was off, but not even on all drawings, just some. Like the floor plan was off, a foot in 40' (I think that was what they said), yet the interior elevations right above were fine???? I sent plt's to them, and while maybe better, not right on. The printer has checked other jobs, and they are right. An architect who was at the printer said he once though he had a drafting error since a print was off scale, but it turned out to be the pdf. I though their machine might need calibrating, but others jobs seem to print fine.

[Thomas Holm]

If you format your pdf to the paper size the printer uses and they set their output (Acrobat or whatever) at print time to "No page scaling" the output should be consistent.

But this has to be checked at every print run, because if the job before was set to "Fit to page" or "Shrink to page" this setting will persist if not changed manually. The job may look right anyway, especially if you have a printing frame on your pages, but it will usually be off scale, and scale varies depending on the content.

Edited: If your Autotext is partly off page, and its size varies between sheets, that alone may account for scale differences. Have you tried putting it completely on the page and making it right-justified to compensate? I usually recommend not to have items that have to be cut off by the printer software. It's too unpredictable.

[Rex Maximilian]

Richard wrote:
...any difference between LayoutID and LayoutNo?

LayID follows your sheet numbering setup (A-1.01 for example)
LayNo is a count of the sheet in the navigator (57, as in the 57th sheet in the Navigator).

The only problem with the LayNo is that it counts EVERY sheet. Even the utility sheets for random stuff that you really don't want to be part of the set or counted.

The problem is if you have presentation sheets and Documentation sheets in the same file. It counts them ALL.

[Richard Morrison]

Rex wrote:

Richard wrote:
...any difference between LayoutID and LayoutNo?

LayID follows your sheet numbering setup (A-1.01 for example)
LayNo is a count of the sheet in the navigator (57, as in the 57th sheet in the Navigator).

I actually meant checking to see whether there was any difference in behavior of the alignment since I believe that LayID is a "newer" autotext entry, and the code might be a little more up to date.