SQOTD: My SID file shows up in print preview, but doesn't actually plot! I need to show this aerial photo - help!
Answer: No matter what type of raster image (SID, TIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, etc) big files need a little coaxing to print. It doesn't matter what flavor of AutoCAD you have either (Map, Civil, Civil 3D or even vanilla AutoCAD) some adjusting to your print settings may be needed.
The most likely culprit for the SID not plotting lies in the printer settings. When AutoCAD converts the drawing to a format the printer can read, it often “chokes” on large raster images.
1. When going to plot, click on Properties (just to left of the printer name).
2. Go to the Device and Document Settings tab.
3. Expand the Graphics area (click on the little plus sign).
a. Highlight the Raster Graphics area.
b. Slide the Trade-off slider bar all the way to the left. This lowers the resolution on the raster image for plotting, but most people do not notice a difference.
4. Click OK.
5. If it asks you to save changes, do so. That way you can use this setting again if you run into problems in the future.
This same setting should work regardless of the printer you are printing to. PDF was just the example I happened to take a screen shot of, but a physical printer will have the same raster graphics settings.
Answer: No matter what type of raster image (SID, TIF, JPG, BMP, PNG, etc) big files need a little coaxing to print. It doesn't matter what flavor of AutoCAD you have either (Map, Civil, Civil 3D or even vanilla AutoCAD) some adjusting to your print settings may be needed.
The most likely culprit for the SID not plotting lies in the printer settings. When AutoCAD converts the drawing to a format the printer can read, it often “chokes” on large raster images.
1. When going to plot, click on Properties (just to left of the printer name).
2. Go to the Device and Document Settings tab.
3. Expand the Graphics area (click on the little plus sign).
a. Highlight the Raster Graphics area.
b. Slide the Trade-off slider bar all the way to the left. This lowers the resolution on the raster image for plotting, but most people do not notice a difference.
4. Click OK.
5. If it asks you to save changes, do so. That way you can use this setting again if you run into problems in the future.
This same setting should work regardless of the printer you are printing to. PDF was just the example I happened to take a screen shot of, but a physical printer will have the same raster graphics settings.
Make sure you don’t slide the top two settings all the way to the left or the image will not appear. Try the first “notch” from the left on each. You may need to do some trial and error with the settings before they take effect. Once you get a setting that shows your SID, save the PC3.
If you are still having problems there are some other things you can do:
• Use Image Clip to cut down on the area of the SID AutoCAD needs to process.
• Check your RASTERTHRESHOLD system variable in CAD. This value indicates the size (in meg) of raster file that AutoCAD will even try to print. Make sure it is larger than the SID file itself.
• Check your RASTERPERCENT system variable in CAD. This indicates the amount of virtual memory CAD will use when plotting a raster image. The default value is 20. I advise setting it to 60.
Now get out there and plot!
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3 comments:
Thank you so much for the tip. I have been trying for months to plot to PDF with no success. DWF is poor quality so that just was not an option here.
I was positive it had to be something else because AutoCAD Mechanical 11 did it earlier in the day. I had to go to custom properties and drop the resolution down to the lowest and it worked!
This didn't solve it for me. I had 2 similar rasters, both c1.5mb in size, and both greyscale. One would print and one would not. I eventually had to copy paste the image from one of the rasters into a new raster and import that and t then would print although was an identical file to the original.
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