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AD2019 and Printing

M

matttay

Member
Hi, I just downloaded the new update yesterday after installing the first release of 2019 recently. I don't know if this problem was present on the first release of 2019 or not. But the printing is much, much worse than 2018. Rendering a drawing to the MSFT PDF printer driver is normally very snappy. But now each page takes 30-45 seconds. And then opening that PDF in chrome is very sluggish with the CPU pegged during scrolling. The PDF file is also huge. Text in the PDF cannot be selected, which indicates that alibre is rendering the pdf pages as a collection of massive images instead of vectors. This is not good. At all. PDFs are designed to be sent to vendors, and vendors don't want a 10M file that cannot be zoomed.

I can easily select text in pdfs of drawings done in 2018.

At this point, there are too many weird things with 2019 and I wish I hadn't upgraded since nothing in 2019 seems very valuable. Is there a way to go back?

I really wish I hadn't installed this.
 
DavidJ

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
There are known issues with both printing in general and with PDFs in particular. Fixes are being worked on - I'm sure Max will update as fixes become available.

You can go back to 2018.2 - but won't be able to open files created or edited in v2019. Just uninstall v2019 (ignore the waring about releasing licence), re-boot computer, install v2018.2. If you don't have the 2018.2 installer, contact support for a download link.
 
M

matttay

Member
>> There are known issues with both printing in general and with PDFs in particular...You can go back to 2018.2 - but won't be able to open files created or edited in v2019

Thanks for the reply. Creating a dozen page pdf drawing outlining fabrication steps is pretty key for dealing with suppliers. The pdf renderings created by 2019 are...effectively useless. And not being able to go back means you are stuck.

I hope the powers that be can get the PDF thing sorted quickly. This would have been a very important thing to point out in the release notes. This isn't a bug; this is major functionality that was omitted by design. The release notes suggested this would be even better. Also, the release notes should indicate files opened in 2019 will be unopenable by previous versions.

Is the aim for 2019 to render vector PDFs again? If so, is there an ETA on that?
 
DavidJ

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
Hey - this was not an 'omission by design' - this issue didn't show up in beta testing, but is now 'known'. The Development team are working hard to resolve it.

The lack of backwards compatibility has always been the case on updates - that isn't new.
 
M

matttay

Member
DavidJ said:
Hey - this was not an 'omission by design' - this issue didn't show up in beta testing, but is now 'known'. The Development team are working hard to resolve it.

The lack of backwards compatibility has always been the case on updates - that isn't new.
Click to expand...

Looks like you guys are using HOOPS 3D to create the PDF. I think the good news is that it's probably a config issue in your code to get it generating vector PDF instead of raster as HOOPS looks extremely comprehensive. I hope this comes sooner rather than later. My current PDF is killing the traditional PDF viewers.
 
M

matttay

Member
@domcm, that link helped a ton! There was a reference in there to legacy display. I found it, and it fixed the issue. I'm back to an instant 150K PDF that is vector.

For anyone else that stumbles on this, try Tools->Options->Display->General->Use Legacy Display and then restart.
 
DavidJ

DavidJ

Administrator
Staff member
Apologies for over generalising - I must have conflated more then one issue.
 
simonb65

simonb65

Alibre Super User
matttay said:
There was a reference in there to legacy display. I found it, and it fixed the issue. I'm back to an instant 150K PDF that is vector.
Click to expand...
I think in relation to this and your earlier comment, the way forward is that the new graphics engine is good for on screen display (still think there are settings or maths rounding issues which cause the odd screen render issues), but outputs like PDF need to use setting similar to legacy to retain the vector drawing. In my opinion, it's not one or the other, it needs to just use the correct mode (to provide the best output) depending on what it is being asked to do.
 
G

gpowell

New Member
matttay said:
@domcm, that link helped a ton! There was a reference in there to legacy display. I found it, and it fixed the issue. I'm back to an instant 150K PDF that is vector.

For anyone else that stumbles on this, try Tools->Options->Display->General->Use Legacy Display and then restart.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info this has really got me out of a bind.
 
Alexander

Alexander

Senior Member
I'm having major problems printing now with 2019, as soon as I send drawing to printer it shuts down Alibre?!. So now i have to print to a PDF and then print on my Canon, pdf quality is worse than before. Now using Rhino3D until these problems have been resolved.
 
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