printing / exporting shaded views?

[the_gibson]

Hi,

I'm working on my first real project in Revit and are getting all the sheets ready for submission.

My question is, we have some shaded views with the shadows turned on (elevations and a solar study) but I'm unsure of the best technique for printing or exporting these specific sheets. I ultimately would like to print to PDF (so we have a digital record) before plotting a hard copy.

I have tried printing with raster processing and I've also tried exporting the sheet as an image (this tends to crash my machine). To be honest I am a little disappointed with the results. It looks great on the screen but when printed the line work and filled regions looking somewhat patchy. It seems to be a real shame.

So, I really just wanted some tips on how others achive best results when putting a set of documents together.

Thanks.

[dpasa]

Actually the crashing is very disappointing... The only solution is to lower the dpi...
Another solution is to print to a pdf printer... and maybe the one you use is not the best... Try with another one too...
Of course you should check your RAMor graphics card...

[eivendur1]

we are using shaded elevations/sections/... all rthe time, but had to tune the acrobat image compression-settings deep inside the adjustments-paneel of the acrobat settings to get rid of the jpg-compression artefacts.
i didn't have any luck exporting images directly from revit - try jpeg "lossless" for a good laugh.
hope that helps..

[trombe]

Actually the crashing is very disappointing... The only solution is to lower the dpi...
Another solution is to print to a pdf printer... and maybe the one you use is not the best... Try with another one too...
Of course you should check your RAMor graphics card...

to the Gibson,
Agree with dpasa - one of the most critical things seems to be video memory.
I have tried with all the versions since Revit 4.5 and since the solar study tools came into Revit. I think they are very good tools but they seem to be video memory hungry big time.

I have used Revit during these years on 3 custom built machines - a 2 Gb machine a 4Gb machine and now with 8Gb and it seems that RAM has little impact on the outcome with shadows for all intents with hardware we are using now compared with 3-4 years ago
My guess is that the video memory and power is a v large factor.
I have not had any issues with printers or virtual printers and shadows at any time in the past.


Hey but on a related point.....why do you want to have shadows on construction documents ? I ask because it might well be different in the US with your stamped sets and licensing stamps and all........our stamped sets relate to local authority approvals for now.

If (I mean uhum, when) the contractor decides to issue some drawings to another party for any reason, they never come back to the Designer / Draughtsman / woman / Architect for spare copies, oh no.....they photo copy them ! (even when they are using pdf docs off their desktop)
So now photocopies and photocopies of photocopies mean that detail can quickly become obscured and shadows, just represent a risk to clarity, becoming blobs at the 2nd copy.
I try to be careful about having shadows, using them for presentation uses and pre-construction authority consents (preliminary for maybe earthworks or water courses, massing and so on). This way the risks of misunderstanding / error are reduced.

Perhaps a shame for aesthetics but risk management is of greater moment right now.
Just interested if it is aesthetics alone.
regards
trombe

[truevis]

When printing with shadows, try using medium quality -- it will be much faster.

[cliff collins]

Sometimes the crashing, or inability to save and image from a shaded/shadow view,
is that the size in pixels is too large, creating a large output file, which requires more memory than the machine has available.

Are you using a 32 bit machine, with 2-4GB of ram? This may be the problem.
If so, make sure you enable the "3 gig switch"--do a search for how to do that.

The current trend is to upgrade to 64 bit Windows, 64 bit Revit software, and add more ram
( 8GB or more ).

We have not seen the crashing and/or inability to print/save images since we upgraded
our systems.

cheers.......

[the_gibson]

Thanks for all the replies. I played around some more yesterday and could get pretty pleasing results printing straight to the plotter with the raster processing set to presentation. I just have to be patient thats all.

To a few of those questions.

I’ll have a look at the pdf compression settings and see if I can tweak those to get a better result. Any clues as to where to look?

And to trombe
These are drawings for development approval not construction, hence the pretty-ing up with shadows etc. I could only imagine the confusion they might cause on a construction documentation set.

And yeah unfortunately we are still on 32bit machines. I have flicked the 3GB switch and that has improved day to day issues remarkably. On the next hardware upgrade I’ll push for 64 bit machines. Reading the forums it seems like the way to go.

cheers

[eivendur1]

sorry for not answering sooner..

for the acrobat compression settings - i'll try to describe it as good as i can, but i'm on a german acrobat install, so i hope my vocabulary doesn't fail me.

under adobe pdf printer settings you got a dropdown menu where you can choose different presets like standard or highquality print - you should find an edit button right beside, which gives you access to the indepth settings - most of which are not exactly clear to me. but here the second point on the lefthand is "pictures", where you can adjust the compression settings.
you might need to play around a bit for a good compromise between compression and printingtimes. i managed to crash revit on rather large shaded elevations with shadows when turning of compression alltogether..

hope that helps,
cheers
T

[pshupe.159931]

I have a brand new Dell Precision Workstation - $4000, with Quad Core Xeon, 6 Gig of Ram 64 Bit OS, and 1Gig Nvidia Quadro FX3800

It seems to take me forever to print my shaded/ shadowed elevations whether to our printer HP500ps, or to a pdf file. Our sheets are 30"x42". By forever I mean 15 - 20 minutes, and then sometimes they go missing, or a preview would take 10 min.

This is extremely frustrating.

Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to speed this up? Thanks.

Regards Peter.

[cliff collins]

If you are using RAC 2010, I beleive Print function is now multi-threaded for use
of multiple processors?

When printing, have Task Mgr. open to Performance pane and watch is all 4 cores
are working, or if only a single core.

You can set priority to High or Above normal.

Your machine should not bog down that much with that specification, unless the
model is exteremly complex/very heavy shadows, etc.

Try turning of anything not required in the view--Model and Annotation categories
as well as worksets.

cheers.........