V6 Goal: True PDF Export

I just made a change yesterday that prints an error message to the command line when the file could not be saved. We’ll probably need a message box version too, but at least there will be something now that let’s you know things didn’t quite work as planned.

Thanks!
That’s great, and yeah a big right-in-your-face message box is needed whenever production fails.

Great work!

I added a wishlist item to add this feature as a checkbox to the print dialog in the future.
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43354

Can I also add another request - checkboxes in the save dialogue to append/prepend the PDF to an existing PDF?

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Sure, I added a request for this at https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43358

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Also a way to save custom sheet sizes, preferably globally (for instance Arch E1 isn’t a default so I always need to add it).

Sam

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Added to the pile at https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43360

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Hi Steve,
any news on how the size compression goes?
Rhino’s PDF files are roughly 10x bigger than both Microsoft PDF printer (which works fine in Rhino BETA by the way) and Acrobat PDF (which crashes a lot)

And just opening then in Acrobat and choosing SaveAs makes them small again, but that should not be needed as it takes too much unneeded time.

For now I have activated the other PDF printers and use the Microsoft PDF printer.
(But that doesn’t support bigger than A3 as default)

And in case you wonder why this is important:
One of our large A1 PDF-prints from Rhino now is 28 MB instead of 2.4MB. So filesize matters a lot!

Also if I print an A3 cropped view then I get this:
Rhino PDF: 27.8 MB
Acrobat PDF: 429 KB
Microsoft PDF: 902 KB

So it seems Rhino doesn’t crop all the data that is outside the page.
If I open the PDF in Illustrator I see that it has a clipping mask and if I remove it then a lot of text objects outside the page pops up.

Oh… and hatches when cropped by the page are messed up. They loose a lot of data.

That’s a deal breaker par none.

So still a way to go before the other PDF-printers can be hidden permanently.

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Yes, please let-me print with the default Microsoft printer as I have a lot of problems with the newest PDF printer in Rhino6. I need to export back to Rhino5 and print from there because in Rhino6 I have bad and strange results.

Just a quick example, I draw a dimension and it is saying that is 23mm instead of 341mm:

Also, a lot of times the dimensions are moved from they place, like this example:

If you want to use the microsoft pdf printer then do this:
Open Rhino’s options and go the the advanced settings tab and then use “printer” as filter and toggle the “hide pdf printers” option.

thanks, needed that as well.
@stevebaer the remaining PDF export issues really need to be addressed before the release.

one thing for example I pointed out so many times already:
if you just open a 3dm file and want to print layouts to PDF directly, then most content will not get printed. you have to go through all the layout pages before. only then all the content from the pages gets exported.

I found a somhow quick fix for printing with the Rhino6_PDF_printer without to have the dimension lines misplaced by choosing to print “Window” instead of “Layout” but unfortunatelly even so, sometimes it is crashing.

@stevebaer
@brian

These three bugs still exist:

  • If you copy a layout page in between existing ones or just move a layout page and then cycle through them (with Ctrl+Tab) then you jump through the pages in the order they were created. You’d rather want to cycle through them in regular series. Only after saving and restarting rhino, this works as expected.

  • When printing to PDF a window appears which gives a visual feedback regarding the progress. This window only shows up for all the standard PDF printers - but not with “true pdf export”. Rhino is unresponsive while exporting, which may lead users to believe rhino has crashed when exporting a lot of pages.

  • When opening a file which has layouts, exporting it to PDF (regardles which pdf printer) without manually cycling through all the layouts pages before, a lot of the content will not be exported and you’ll get a PDF with a lot of white space. Often I want to open a file, just make a small change in one of the viewports and then print/export again. but like described I have to go through all the layout pages first - that’s very annoying.

I mentioned two of those bugs a few times already, but they were never addressed. Hopefully you will acknowledge them finally, so you can start fixing them - please.

Thank you very much.

I implemented compression of images when it makes sense, but obviously there are other things I need to do to shrink the output size. Can you share your file with me so I can repeat what you are seeing?

This is the first I’ve heard of this bug. A sample file would help a lot. Thanks

Does this happen only with the PDF printer or with all printers? I’m suspecting that this happens with all printers. A sample file would help me out so I can try to repeat what you are seeing.

Thanks for the well written description of the bugs. I’ve logged these as
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43446
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43448
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-43449

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Would you happen to have a file that repeats this behavior that I can take a look at? I apologize if I’ve already asked you for this file and you sent one to me.

yep, just cleaned up the file and put some demo content in it - still the same. how do I send it to you or should I just post it here?

You can post here if you don’t mind other people having access to the file. Otherwise you can directly email at steve@mcneel.com

Thanks

got it, just sent it to you via PM.
btw. the file also can’t remember that I want the print to be A3 landscape. always have to reset that when I open the file.