PDF problem

[Nick2]

Hi, I need a bit of guidance for working on some saved drawings in autocad. These were drawn by other people at work. I can access the drawing file and it all looks ok on the screen and prints ok but when I save to PDF, a secton of the drawing is missing, as if the drawing has moved to the right slightly and the right hand border is missing...any advice on how to stoop this or rectify it would be great. Thanks

[Dana W]

Apparently there is a difference in the offset distance in the pdf driver since these drawings were done. It has happened to me before. There are a couple of ways to fix it, but both are tedious if you have a lot of drawings to fix. What is being plotted as shown on the plot dialog at the lower left, Window, Layout, or Extents? If you don't have to worry about the scale being exact, you can change the What To

Plot selection to Window, or you can play with the Offset distance until the border is fully printed.

 

Once you get it worked out on one page, you can save the layout as a Named Page Setup, and use it in Batch Plot or Publish as the default layout. You can also change ALL the page layouts to the saved named page setup. I have one myself named PDF LAYOUT of all things. In fact, you may look in the Page Setup drop down list on the plot dialog to see if there is already one in there that works better.

[Nick2]

Many thanks Dana, I forgot to mention I'm very new to Autocad so self learning but I'm certainly looking forward to learning as much as I can. Apologies but what is 'off set' and how do I use it please. Many thanks

[SLW210]

If it plots to the printer ok, make sure all the setting are the same when you go to plot to PDF.

 

Post some screen shots of the settings in both plot managers.

 

I moved your thread to the AutoCAD Drawing Management & Output Forum.

[Dana W]

Many thanks Dana, I forgot to mention I'm very new to Autocad so self learning but I'm certainly looking forward to learning as much as I can. Apologies but what is 'off set' and how do I use it please. Many thanks

First off, I may be getting in a little deep for a novice, especially a self taught AutoCad user.

 

You will now begin to see why AutoCad classes are so expensive, and last so long. It's easily a two semester college level class just to get to the point where you can think more about what to draw than how to manipulate the program.

 

"Offset" as it applies to plotting is what I was referring to, and is shown on my attachment in the purple box. The image is the plot dialog box (2015, not much different than 2013) The Offset is driven by what paper you have selected (red box), what plotter you have selected, what the printable area of your paper selection, and/or mechanical limit of your plotter is, whether you are plotting "WINDOW", "LAYOUT", or "EXTENTS", and whether or not you have selected "Center The Plot".

 

AutoCad adjusts the offset automagically and one USUALLY does not need to mess with it. However, some autocad versions have had issues with the pdf driver, dwg_to_pdf.pc3, not quite understanding which paper one has selected for use, particularly when selecting LAYOUT in the What To Plot box. I normally use a FULL BLEED paper selection in order to have the largest printable area possible, and I have had dwg_to_pdf.pc3 in some older AutoCad versions choke on the Full Bleed printable area, and use too much "x" offset distance, driving my border line off the right side of the paper printable area just as you describe is happening.

 

There have been several questions asked. Please provide some more information. Ideally, you can post a drawing (***.dwg file), and one or two resulting pdf files here that are behaving in this way, so we can get to solving the issue.

 

If ALL your settings are the same when you plot to paper, and when you plot to pdf, then the pdf driver you are using to create the pdf my be at fault. I was suggesting that experimenting with adjusting the offset to less distance in the "X" axis direction, even negative, may fix it. The offset is the distance your lower left corner of your "assumed" drawing is moved from the 0,0 coordinate in paperspace, so it won't land in the non-printable margin of your paper.

 

Of course there is a caveat. Adjusting the offset will adversely affect plotting to hardcopy with the same layout. To avoid this, save the modifed layout as a named page settup, and use it for pdf's only.

[BIGAL]

An alternative works every time and removes the offset is to use a window and centre at scale, we have a lower left and upper right marker point both same offset X & Y they are 6mm bigger than our title block sheet size so they dont get plotted. We thretaen anyone around here with castration if they move the title block away from 0,0.

 

You can see in the image that the offsets are grey as Autocad has worked it out.