PDF & Printing not quite right

[wilsonc97]

Hi,

On print preview, everything is looking great. When I print, or publish as
PDF, some of my boxes are getting a little misplaced. The boxes on the far
left line up exactly where I want, but as you go towards the right of the
page they are getting moved a little further to the right than I want (and
more than what Visio design page as well as print preview are showing).

More detail: My background page is a drawing of a circuit board. I'm
placing boxes w/ 50% transparency on the main page to highlight some various
components on the board. The boxes on the far left of the drawing line up
fine when I print or publish as PDF. As you go towards the right of the page
the boxes are being moved slightly towards the right of the component, with
the problem becoming increasingly worse the further right you go. As I said,
Visio shows everything aligned properly, print preview shows everything
proper, but actually printing or publishing to PDF both create the
mis-aligned boxes.

Thanks!

 

[Paul Herber]

Hi,

On print preview, everything is looking great. When I print, or publish as
PDF, some of my boxes are getting a little misplaced. The boxes on the far
left line up exactly where I want, but as you go towards the right of the
page they are getting moved a little further to the right than I want (and
more than what Visio design page as well as print preview are showing).

More detail: My background page is a drawing of a circuit board. I'm
placing boxes w/ 50% transparency on the main page to highlight some various
components on the board. The boxes on the far left of the drawing line up
fine when I print or publish as PDF. As you go towards the right of the page
the boxes are being moved slightly towards the right of the component, with
the problem becoming increasingly worse the further right you go. As I said,
Visio shows everything aligned properly, print preview shows everything
proper, but actually printing or publishing to PDF both create the
mis-aligned boxes.

Have you by any chance got the document set to fit to the drawing
page?
menu File -> Page Setup -> Print Setup
anything other that 100% ?

 

[wilsonc97]

The only solution I have been able to find so far is horizontally
stretching/shrinking my background image (doing so from the right side of
that image). Several trial & errors and I finally got things looking how I
want when I publish it as a PDF or print.

Since what Visio is showing is different than the results I get when I
publish as PDF or print, it makes my solution tedious and time consuming as
it takes a few tries before I get it right. I would love to know a better
solution, and why this is happening.

Thanks.

 

[wilsonc97]

Currently set at 100% (fyi 11" x 17"), page size is set to same as printer
paper size, and drawing scale is 1:1.

 

[Paul Herber]

Currently set at 100% (fyi 11" x 17"), page size is set to same as printer
paper size, and drawing scale is 1:1.

Ok, what happens when you Save As in a graphics format?

 

[wilsonc97]

Interesting... When I save it as a JPEG and open that JPEG, the JPEG looks
just like my drawing did in Visio (& print preview). In other words, the
JPEG doesn't move my shaded boxes

Because of our standards, I need the file in a PDF format. Any ideas why
publishing as PDF moves things, but the JPEG remains the same?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Paul Herber]

Interesting... When I save it as a JPEG and open that JPEG, the JPEG looks
just like my drawing did in Visio (& print preview). In other words, the
JPEG doesn't move my shaded boxes

Because of our standards, I need the file in a PDF format. Any ideas why
publishing as PDF moves things, but the JPEG remains the same?

Right, which PDF printer are you using? There are many available.
What are its settings? Is it set to the same paper size?

 

[wilsonc97]

Sorry, this is a little outside of my realm of familiarity but I'll do my
best to provide a good answer.

To convert my visio drawing to a PDF, I'm using the Microsoft add-on that I
downloaded here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...11-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041&displaylang=en

I'm using Adobe Reader 9.00 to open the PDF.

As far as I can tell, when it converts the PDF and I check the size it is
still 17" x 11" (same size as the drawing I created). Also, if I print the
drawing straight out of Visio (ie the *.vsd file) my printer prints it with
those boxes offset as well. So the .vsd file looks good in Visio but prints
off, and the .PDF looks off in Adobe9.0 and prints off as well.

Lastly, I've been using a general template I created that I start with and
then insert the proper background picture, and on the foreground insert the
proper shaded boxes. This problem seems to happen as I get more boxes on the
screen. The drawings I've made that have few boxes never seem to be a
problem. Basically, more shaded boxes = larger difference in box offset on
the PDF or printed copy. The problem is consistent in that the amount of
offset gets larger and larger going from left to right.

Hope that is clear and answered your question? Thanks again for trying to
help me figure this out!

 

[Paul Herber]

Sorry, this is a little outside of my realm of familiarity but I'll do my
best to provide a good answer.

It sounds to me like a printer driver problem. Do you have the latest
drivers installed? Can you borrow another printer to see if it
produces a similar effect?

 

[wilsonc97]

Might be a bit of time before I can try either updating my driver or testing
on a different printer, but that's what I'll do next. Thanks again for your
help. I'll post back here with my results once I've had a chance to try it
out.

 

[WapperDude]

When you say you things are shifted when you publish as PDF, do you mean the
hardcopy or the electronic version or both? Both the background and
foreground pages are set up identically? Same scale, grid, rulers, and
snapping?

I tried an array of lines with rounded ends representing circuit board
traces, filing an A-size sheet, in landscape mode. Foreground page I placed
ovals to straddle the gaps and encompass the line ends, e.g, radial leaded
caps. I see no displacement in either the electronic or hardcopies. I used
both Adobe PDF and PDF Creator to create the new file(s). Both were
identical with no misregistration. I made no other adjustments, just went
with preset defaults on everything.

Not so much a solution, but rather a confirmation that the process ought to
work. This was done on V2003, but I don't think that matters either. I tend
to agree with Paul's assessment, that it's something in your
installation/physical configuration.

Wapperdude

 

[wilsonc97]

When I publish as PDF, both the electronic version & the hardcopy have the
shifted shapes. When I'm looking at the Visio drawing (not the PDF) in
design view as well as Visio print preview it looks like it should print
fine, but the hardcopy has shifted shapes.

I have a base template I have created, and I've used that template for
several drawings. The weird thing is about 20% of my drawings experience
this problem. I would think that if it was a page setup problem all my
drawings would have the same problem. I double checked page size, scale, etc
for my front and background page but can't find any differences.

My creation process is as follows. After opening my template I insert the
appropriate *.emf file for the background page (each circuit board has its
own .emf image), and on the forground add the various shapes. Somtimes I get
the problem, sometimes I don't... I thought it was related to how many
shapes I put on the front page, but I just created one with minimal shapes
and still had the problem.

I truely do appreciate people trying to help me out here. I wish I knew
more about this stuff...

Paul mentioned a possible print driver problem. I'm not terribly familiar
with this, but does printer driver have an effect on publishing as PDF? I
have a plotter driver installed on this computer as well, and tried setting
that to default printer and then re-published a PDF but the problem was still
there.

Thanks again!

 

[wilsonc97]

So I decided to start a brand new document from scratch. I tried recreating
one of the drawings that have been giving me the problems. I set the paper
to 11x17, and inserted the associated emf file. I didn't bother with a
background page, and just put shapes on top of the image all on one page.
The exact same problem happened.

So it appears to me it's the emf file causing a problem? What I don't get
is why some of my EMF files aren't causing this problem, but others are? I'm
using pdf2picture to turn the original PDF of the circuit board into an emf
file so I can use it in Visio. Weird problem...

 

[WapperDude]

Wow. You beat me to the punch. Because both hard/e copies show the issue, I
don't think it's a print driver, and you tried what I was going to recommend.
Well, can you try converting the emf to another format, say, png (which
seems to behave nicely) or jpeg? That ought to narrow it down.

 

[wilsonc97]

Here's my latest solution...

I just tried ungrouping and regrouping the background image (without doing
anything else). It appears to have fixed things. I still don't know why
saving as PDF would cause the problem, but saving as jpeg made everything
look like it was supposed to. I also don't know why only some of the images
were causing the problem but others weren't. Yet apparently ungroup/regroup
fixes it. Odd... I guess on the baords that cause this problem I'll just
ungroup (often times that takes several minutes when lots of components are
on the board) and subsequently group it all back up.

If you know why this is happening, I'd be interested. But if you don't feel
like investigating it further I have found a workaround.

Thanks again guys!