BenPalmer Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 I've been playing around with using solid filled walls with a transparency of 50%. Looks really nice, and is behaving nicely with other layers that cross over the top of them such as text, dimensions, etc. However, I noticed when I print, Chief appears to be treating it like a raster image (print image function) vs a vector image (normal print function). For example: when I print a plan with walls that are solid filled with no transparency, the lines are crisp vector views as expected in the pdf when zooming in. Once I add transparency to the walls, the entire drawing becomes pixelated raster views when zooming in. It appears Chief is treating items that have a transparency fill as raster vs vector. I'll attach a quick print out of a small casita plan. I am using both Adobe Acrobat Pro, and PDF Factory Pro and getting the same results in both. I did have to increase the down-sampling of images to ensure the quality didn't get too pixelated. Another hint that this is being treated as 'print image' is that it is creating a white box border around the plan and cutting my logo off in the top right corner of the attachment. Curious if others are getting this. I can attach a plan as well, but would prefer trying your own quick plan to see if your settings get the same results or not. Print-Sample.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted February 10, 2015 Share Posted February 10, 2015 Interesting study I use just a standard light gray fill, not using transparence at all, printing in grayscale with the setting for color off is grayscale Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nicinus Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Not good if that is the case. Must be a bug, why would they add something that rasterizes the plan? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VisualDandD Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Interesting study I use just a standard light gray fill, not using transparence at all, printing in grayscale with the setting for color off is grayscale I do something similar. I dont use Chief's PDF output function. I use colored walls in my drawings, but I wanted to print in 'greyscale' so the walls did not appear black. I did not spend a lot of time, but I did not see that I could do that. So....I just do it the way I always do. I use a separate PDF "printer". (Bullzip is what I use). It has some nice features like "watermarks" as well for things. But I configure my Bullzip to NOT print color. I send the drawing to the printer from Chief with color selected. (Chief gives a little warning that the printer does not support color). The result is I get very nice greyscale walls, while still keeping my color in my drawings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenPalmer Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 Yeah, I've done the color/greyscale print in the past, but found that the colors I was using were too light and therefore my line weights were not true to what was set. I played around with darker colors and line weights, but I admit I was too lazy to spend the time. My pdf maker has a greyscale option as well, but I get the same problem as mentioned above with the colors I'm using. Let me know if I'm missing something. I know some have a seperate layer set for printing, which seems like an unnecessary extra step and prone to errors in case a layer is inadvertently left off, or added on. If I'm missing something on this process, please elaborate. This fill option seems like a perfect solution if it will print as vector and not raster. I'm not sure what is triggering the raster. I put a cad box with 50% transparent fill on the screen to see if any transparent fill causes it, but it didn't. Maybe I need to make the box bigger? Or it is specific to the walls? Not sure. Hopefully Chief will test this more and get it fixed so we can use it. I love the transparency fill, and understand it is a new feature and there are bound to be kinks to work out. That is why I'm reporting this so the hopefully the final release will have this fixed. PS: Nincinus, love your profile pic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug_Park Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Hi Ben, In your case I think choosing a higher DPI will provide better results. I would choose the DPI that your printer uses, probably something like 600, 1200 etc. This will take a bit longer to print and take up more memory in the PDF. Let us know if you have more issues. This is a new feature so I wouldn't be surprised to find areas where things don't work quite as well as they should. Thanks for your detailed feedback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianBeck Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Ben, I have tried to reproduce this in a simple test plan and I have not been able too. I tested 4 different 3rd party PDF printers plus the Chief Save as PDF funtion and could not reproduce these results. I currently do not have Adobe or PDF Factory though. Could you please send this plan into support along with any steps needed to reproduce the problem? https://support.chiefarchitect.com Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenPalmer Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 Thanks Doug and Brian. I'll send the plan and steps in when I get a moment. Hopefully it's something on my end I can change which will make it easy for all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Ben, What pdf program did you use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenPalmer Posted February 11, 2015 Author Share Posted February 11, 2015 I get the same results in both Adobe Acrobat Pro & PDF Factory Pro. Those I attached were done in PDF Factory Pro, and the logo is a watermark/letterhead I add during the print preview process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted February 11, 2015 Share Posted February 11, 2015 Thanks, I also use Acrobat Pro ver 10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_Downunder Posted February 12, 2015 Share Posted February 12, 2015 Let us know if you have more issues. This is a new feature so I wouldn't be surprised to find areas where things don't work quite as well as they should.Thanks for your detailed feedback. I hope this is an invitation. I had a meltdown and re-installed Win 8.1 I installed my printer Hp T120. Not sure what is going on but it is strange. The issue with Chief is: It is slow.... So I will leave it at that. Photoshop shows the printer driver quite quickly. Chief does not. I don't know how to report this because it relates to my computer. Any comments are welcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenPalmer Posted May 21, 2015 Author Share Posted May 21, 2015 More information and better resolution on this topic found at this thread: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/5189-pdf-anomaly/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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