Better print quality

[Chad Smith]

I've noticed that the print quality is very poor. :cry:

:arrow: E.g. I have my dimension lines set to very thin, and I can have a line next to it that has exactly the same thickness, but the line is printed at twice the thickness of the dimension line, and is slightly blurry.

It looks as though the drawing is printed as an image, and looks pixilated, and then the dimensions and text are super-imposed over the top as vectors.
It gets even worse when the drawings are saved as a PDF or DWF.

I have set all the DPI settings I can find to their max, with no improvement.

We use exceptionally good printers, and have never had any problems like this using AutoCAD.

[Steve_Stafford]

Are you using the latest build? Me thinks that you have driver issues if you are experiencing quality problems. Run down the list of printing plotting tips in the the Help file. We use HP/Xerox plotters and HP/Canon/Xerox printers and print quality is excellent!

If you are in a networked environment that has centrally located plotter "shares" it is easier to update. If you have plotters that are shared but store the drivers locally, then your PC could use an older driver than others and create a situation where your plot quality is different from another PC's.

Moving to Hardware

[Chad Smith]

Arrgh, I was playing the settings and it seems to be printing better now, but I don't know what I did. Would have been nice to know for the future, incase it happens again. :oops:
At least I know it's there somewhere. Thanks anyway Steve.

But the DWF quality still seems to be poor, and when printed at 600 DPI to get the best quality, Express Viewer is very slow to display, zoom and pan. :cry:
It still seems to print it as a raster image instead of a vector image.
I thought DWF was supposed to be a vector based file. Am I correct here?

[PeterJ]

If the drawing appears pixelated you may be working with the raster processing option selected, instead of vector processing.

Everything we print internally and externally comes out looking crisp.