Publishing Using Page Setup Override Issues

[Chud]

Civil 3D v2016 with SP3

What I have are some full size files I am trying to PDF half size.

What I cannot do, using Sheet manager, grab a few files (usually do them all but I tried just a few last attempt - still no dice), right-click, go to 'Publish' then 'Publishing Using Page Setup Override' and use my self-made DWG to PDF page setup to PDF my full size drawing to half size. It starts off strong, asks me where I want to save my multi-file PDF, the icon at the bottom shows its animation like its getting to work and boom errors out. No reason given in the 'Plot and Publish Details' window. Just abruptly ends. This use to work in previous versions of C3D and I know I've used my overrides in v2016 before.

What I can do:
Use the 'DWG to PDF' through the normal plot window (each sheet individually), but I have 52 sheets and I want this aspect returned to me!
Modify by override page setup to use any other PDF writer. (and worked)
I can use 'Publish to PDF' (for all sheets) - but I don't know what writer it's using. I do prefer the quality I see from DWG to PDF. If you know where to check that info, that would be appreciated. After I post this I am going to plot some PDFs individually and compare the DWG to PDF individual plots vs the Publish to PDF.

I have tried:
Modified my 'sheet set pdf publish options' and excluded layers & downgraded the 1200 dpi to 600 dpi for both settings.
Unchecking all the boxes save the font capture.

Possibilities:
I do have a copied & paste special excel table in my very first sheet, not sure if some janky "file not available to edit" is putting the kabosh my publish job or not. Usually an excel window pops up and asks about opening in read-only.

Any thoughts as to why C3D errors out using DEG to PDF through the sheet set managers publish overide?

[cadtag]

Publish to PDF _always_ uses Autodesk's PDF printer.

What I do is setup all my sheets with a known good PDF pagesetup in PageSetup Manager when I work. No need to import an over-ride, just pick that in the drop down list in the Publish dialog.

[BlackBox]

I also use named Page Setups to print via Autopublish at Save, rather than SSM... I use this to quickly apply a named Page Setup to all Layouts.

The only gotcha there, is that as-is, Autopublish will print all drawings, whereas I only want to print sheets & exhibits, not XREF/DREF-only drawings... To accomplish that, I use this (looks like Autodesk never published my app update, so I'll have to fix that).


Just also be mindful that 2016 has the new Autodesk PDF drivers - DWG to PDF is ignored on PDF Export and hard-coded to use the general Autodesk PDF, if memory serves.

They also broke the resultant PDF, where the creation of thumbnails is now hard-coded too, so don't be surprised if Layers, etc. still show up even though you've disabled them in DWG to PDF.



Cheers

[Chud]

Thank you for your replies, your information was very useful. I now have my template for future projects set up correctly, no more over-rides to print half size. Created 4 page setups to cover all my needs. 2 plots and 2 pdfs.


10/4/16 Also I just found that I had some options set wrong. Under the Plot and Publish tab the area that sets background plotting and publishing I only had PUBLISH checked, so yep, smooth. Checked the PLOTTING box and fixed my issue with over-ride plotting.

11/17/2016 I lied on 10/4/16 I hadn't found what was keeping from plotting using my preferred quick and dirty method, today I can tell you I finally did the google search with the proper wording and found out the *.pc3 files are different for v2016 and newer softwares. After a closer look at my error messages it was telling me "device not found" It turns out there are 4 new drivers for governing dwg to pdf.
AutoCAD PDF(General Documentation).pc3
AutoCAD PDF(High Quality Print).pc3
AutoCAD PDF(Smallest File).pc3
AutoCAD PDF(Web and Mobile).pc3

Found these under my harddrive copied them to the network folder where we house all our standard files and for good measure I copied the DWG to PDF.pc3 from my v2017 there as well and now I am do my quick over-ride pdf plot.