Printers in Rhino and Line Opacity

Hi all.

My first post here. Bought Rhino 8 recently.

My Adobe Acrobat license has lapsed and I wasn’t planning on necessarily renewing it. So in printing drafted pdfs in Rhino I switched to the Microsoft Print to PDF. However I realized that it was failing to execute transparency (opacity) of Print Colour lines.

Rhino PDF did fix this, and prints faster anyway. However I recently imported in an old AutoCAD title-block (which I exploded) which now produces PDFs of file size 0 which don’t open. If I hide the AutoCAD geometry and turn off those layers, it prints OK. Additonally, the Microsoft Print to PDF succeeds in the print with the ACAD geometry (albeit without that transparency).

Thanks for any help provided, or for direction to the proper place for me if more suitable.

  • Tim.

Hi Tim -

Please provide both the output of the Rhino SystemInfo command and a simple 3dm file that we can troubleshoot. If you are not able to post this 3dm file in a public forum, please use Rhino Accounts to upload that file to us. Make sure to copy the URL of this thread in the comments field if you use that form.
-wim

Hi Wim.
Thankyou, that’s very kind of you.
Attached (I hope):

MAIN2.3dm (3.9 MB)

SystemInfo:
Rhino 8 SR10 2024-8-15 (Rhino 8, 8.10.24228.13001, Git hash:master @ f4c93f2b85de4dc69b50ed22f1b0d91445724d03)
License type: Commercial, build 2024-08-15
License details: Cloud Zoo

Windows 10 (10.0.19045 SR0.0) or greater (Physical RAM: 16GB)
.NET 7.0.0

Computer platform: DESKTOP

Standard graphics configuration.
Primary display and OpenGL: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (NVidia) Memory: 6GB, Driver date: 9-1-2023 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 537.34
> Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
- Windows Main Display attached to adapter port #0
- Secondary monitor attached to adapter port #1

OpenGL Settings
Safe mode: Off
Use accelerated hardware modes: On
Redraw scene when viewports are exposed: On
Graphics level being used: OpenGL 4.6 (primary GPU’s maximum)

Anti-alias mode: 4x
Mip Map Filtering: Linear
Anisotropic Filtering Mode: High

Vendor Name: NVIDIA Corporation
Render version: 4.6
Shading Language: 4.60 NVIDIA
Driver Date: 9-1-2023
Driver Version: 31.0.15.3734
Maximum Texture size: 32768 x 32768
Z-Buffer depth: 24 bits
Maximum Viewport size: 32768 x 32768
Total Video Memory: 6 GB

Rhino plugins that do not ship with Rhino

Rhino plugins that ship with Rhino
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Commands.rhp “Commands” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk.rhp “Renderer Development Kit”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoRenderCycles.rhp “Rhino Render” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk_etoui.rhp “RDK_EtoUI” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\NamedSnapshots.rhp “Snapshots”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\MeshCommands.rhp “MeshCommands” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoCycles.rhp “RhinoCycles” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\export_PDF.rhp “PDF Export” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Toolbars\Toolbars.rhp “Toolbars” 8.10.24228.13001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\3dxrhino.rhp “3Dconnexion 3D Mouse”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Displacement.rhp “Displacement”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\SectionTools.rhp “SectionTools”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoBonusTools.rhp “Rhino Bonus Tools”

FYI the ACAD geometry is the bottom 4 layers. I moved the text into model space to see if it would fix anything.

Thanks for that file, Tim.
I wasn’t able to reproduce the 0-size output here.
When I open the file, I get a warning about missing fonts:

Read 2 annotation styles and 2 annotation objects that reference 2 fonts that are not installed on this device.

Annotation styles referencing a missing font:
_MF note text / DIN Regular
DIN Regular / DIN Regular [DIN-Bold]

Missing fonts:
DIN Regular [DIN-Bold]
DIN Regular

One thing you could try is replacing the fonts in those styles with, e.g., Arial, to see if that makes the problem go away.
Other than that, printing is somewhat related to the display code, which relies on good GPU drivers. Yours are a year old and an update wouldn’t hurt.
-wim

Hi Wim,

Through trial and error I’ve figured out that Rhino PDF didn’t like the imported Yu Gothic Medium Style (which has that as the font) which some of the text was assigned to.

Microsoft Print to PDF has no issues with it though.

Having also updated the driver, it appears Microsoft Print to PDF still can’t handle line opacity settings.

I’ll take it from here, though I thought you’d like to know. Thanks for your help regardless!

Tim.

We just fixed an issue with Yu Gothic and Rhino PDF. This fix should be in 8.11 which we plan on shipping tomorrow.

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