Fillet lines are off from straight lines on PDF ?

[inthemood]

In both model and paper space, rectangles with corners filleted look fine. However, the filleted curved corners are not joined with straight lines once it's exported/plotted to PDF. I have to zoom in very closely to see this, so it won't be a big problem for actual printing. But I can't figure out why the lines are broken on PDF when they are well joined in both model and paper space.

 

I tried changing PDF quality, plot style, and anything I can think of, but to no avail. I hope someone could help me understand what is going on.

Thank you in advance.

 

Autocad 2012 on MAC, 10.7.2 with Acrobat X.

[CyberAngel]

the filleted curved corners are not joined with straight lines

 

I don't quite understand your situation. If the corners are supposed to be curved, why do you want straight lines? Do you mean that the curves are aliased, meaning they're made up of small rectangular sections instead of one smooth curve?

 

If the curve is showing up properly in your drawing but not in the PDF, the disconnect may be in the PDF driver. Have you tried using a different driver?

 

Welcome to the forum.

[SLW210]

Are they plotting like this or just appearing on the monitor like this?

Some images or a drawing file may help explaing your problem better.

[inthemood]

Sorry I'm not clear about my question.

As you can see on the images, when zoomed in, the corners are not properly joined with orthogonal lines. The curve itself appears to be smooth vector line. The problem is, they are not continuous.

 

Acrobat 9 exhibited more severe problem with Lion regarding this issue, so I upgraded to Acrobat X. Although mitigated, the issue still remains. I also think Adobe PDF may be the culprit. Are there any other options to make PDFs from AutoCAD?

 

The problem shows up with single page plot to PDF, batch plot to PDF, and export to PDF. Probably I'm being too fastidious, but it is very vexing.

I see this both on screen and paper (on paper it's not easy to see, but it's still there)

[Jack_O'neill]

Are you viewing the pdf in autocad or something like adobe reader? If you zoom up close enough, almost any pdf or jpg is going to have ragged edges in curves and diagonal lines. They are after all printed representations of what's on your screen. The image on your screen is made up of pixels, which are squares. Screen resolution is determined by how many of these per inch are there. Works the same way for creating jpgs and pdfs. Just depends on how many squares per inch your system is capable of...more means cleaner lines and curves because the pixels are smaller. Back in the old days we marveled at the fancy new 600 DPI (dots per inch) printer and how sharp everything was. By today's standards that's barely tolerable.

 

Got a magnifying glass handy? If so, grab it and take a look at your monitor through the magnifying glass. You'll see what I'm talking about.

[SLW210]

Is there a DWG to PDF.pc3 listed in the plotters/printers in AutoCAD for MAC?

[Jack_O'neill]

You guys all got posted before I hit send....dang telephone...interrupted my thoughts

[Jack_O'neill]

This is a 1" fillet viewed at 1200% in Adobe X. Not quite as far off as yours, but suffers from the same problem. Printed, you'll never see it.

[inthemood]

Thanks for all responses.

I understand the difference between vector and pixel. I believe this is a different matter, and I think I shouldn't be seeing this when zoomed in only this much. Also, I can even see the lines are not joined on paper when looking at it carefully, not just on screen.

 

(please ignore gray lines overlapping. those are hatch lines. I'm talking about filleted curves not joined with the abutted straight line)

 

On MAC with Lion, PDF Printer is not listed as a printer. You just need to save as PDF, so no "DWG to PDF.pc3."

[SLW210]

You might search around, but seems I recall other AutoCAD for Mac with same problem. Maybe another PDF plotter, I am not sure if CutePDF works with MAC or not should be something out there.

 

I do know Apple has had there differences with Adobe in the current and past.

[Jack_O'neill]

Could it be simply a video issue? I don't know anything about macs, but maybe the video processor doesn't quite understand what it's supposed to do. It's been what, 20 years or so since Autodesk made a mac version. Maybe they need to do a bit of fine tuning.

[SLW210]

He stated it was printing like that. Could still be the video processor I guess, Jack.

[rkent]

Have you tried changing the resolution in the .pc3 file?

[inthemood]

haha, I did search around all night long last night, but I couldn't find an answer. CutePDF isn't so cute for MAC, and I don't see other PDF plotters available for MAC, either. I guess no one finds a need to make one since PDF printing (save as PDF) is a built-in feature in OS X.

[rkent]

haha, I did search around all night long last night, but I couldn't find an answer. CutePDF isn't so cute for MAC, and I don't see other PDF plotters available for MAC, either. I guess no one finds a need to make one since PDF printing (save as PDF) is a built-in feature in OS X.

 

AutoCAD has a built in PDF printer, at least for Windows.

[Jack_O'neill]

Does it show up on paper if you print directly to paper from Autocad? Skip the pdf step, and print directly to the paper? If you haven't tried it, could you? See if does it then?

[pentagon17]

Had the same problem. Set your paper size x10 larger, plots fine:P