I have been a user of Rhino for a while now, but am only recently trying to use it for my drafting also, instead of AutoCAD. I am using layouts and all goign pretty well. But I am having trouble getting good line quality and general definition of the print when printing to pdf. I am using a licenced pdf print driver, and I have gone in there and made the settings the highest dpi (2400). I have tried both vector and raster output. Generally the raster output is better. But the files come out very small in size , and when I zoom in, the resolution is really bad on the pdf. Any tips on how to make better pdf prints of layouts?
Slightly related, I have some files that the line types are all too fat. The text comes out nice and crisp, but the lines are terrible. Short of going through and adjusting all in the model, I would have thought I could override all to ahirline thickness in the plot dialog box. But it looks like it is already set to this as it is currently as “Scale by 1.0” and “Default Line Width Hairline”. Any tips for this?
Which pdf printer are you using? I’m guessing you may be getting hi rez output but with a very high compression factor applied to the rasters. I’m just using Cutepdf free version and I have no way of adjusting the raster compression through the print dialogue.
It might turn out you’ll need to print high rez image files from the print dialog, then bring those in to something like Adobe’s Acrobat to get a very high quality end product. In there you can adjust the compression factor on the images used to create pdfs.
As for your second issue with line weights, what happens when drop that scale from 1.0 down to .5 or .25?
Hi Peter
If you could post some screenshots or example files, it would be far easier to find the possible cause. Words are not sufficient to describe matters of a subjective nature like the quality of something.
I am using PDF Converter Pro, what has a print driver called Gaaiho PDF.
Attached are two images. The first is the properties for the printer when I go in through the print diaglog box. NOte resolution set to 2400dpi.
The second image shows a screen shot of the pdf when I have zoomed right in. For the size of this pdf, it is a fairly close up zoom, but when I print to pdf in autocad or similar, I have very good resolution even when zoomed right in. Typically their file sizes are larger too.
Peter, better to upload a full pdf so we can evaluate based on that.
Based on this screen shot and your comments about printing pdfs from acad, I still suspect your Gaaiho is using a high compression factor for the raster images it produces. If its using a low quality jpeg compression setting (very lossy, throwing out lots of pixels), one can have small file sized ‘hi-res’ images that look like crap close up.
