PDF writer

[J-G]

I was curious if Revit ever came with a PDF writer that wrote to multiple pages like the DWF writer does. It seems like it is just a standard the PDF writer that would come with Acrobat.

Also has anyone noticed line quality differences when printing form PDFs, vs. DWFs? I have noticed a difference between the general darkness of some of our plots and I am trying to track it down...it is a small difference, but if you compare an older drawing set, the new ones we have been doing in Revit do seem lighter (I am not talking about lineweights). This could be Revit, DWF, or simply our printing service.

[studio3p]

Several months ago someone posted a multi-page PDF file in which the references were retained as hyperlinks. From what I've gathered from this forum that particular functionality was eliminated from the latest PDF writer. I'm guessing that this was done because Autodesk is actively promoting their DWF format as superior to PDF and this is one of the features they use to prove it. If you do a search on this forum you will most likely stumble upon a few threads addressing this very issue.

[shaunv68276]

Revit PDF writer 4.2 does exactly that. in the bottom left of the dialogue box is an option to select multiple sheets & or views. I have had no issues with the print quality which is top notch. if you need it I can send it to you, its 6.5mb though

[beegee]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Revit PDF writer 4.2 will print multiple sheets, but not hyperlink them ? ( It used to prior to R 5. 0 )

I think that was supposed to be one of the advantages of DWF, and it certainly works well for the competition enties I looked at today.

[jcyyoung]

I first tried it with acrobat distiller for multiple copies which didn't work very well.
Revit PDF writer 4.2 does multiple prints very well.

[Steve_Stafford]

If you print to pdf and do multiple sheets at the same time, section markers, callouts, elevation tags will all hyperlink to the sheet they are on. Further, the other sheets will be bookmarked in Acrobat when viewed. You just can't nest all the sheets into one pdf. But if you own acrobat you could assemble them afterward. DWF is cool in this way and when Revit was demonstrating 5.0 at AU it was said that they showed the pdf writer doing it too, yet it was pulled at distribution time. Product quality related issues was why, we were told.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

The Revit PDF writer doesn't do a multi-page PDF but it will do multiple PDF files with hyperlinks intact. In order for the hyperlinks to be maintained you must batch plot using the Selected Views and Sheets option in the Print Range. You can't plot one sheet at a time and you can't add a sheet with links after the fact. All the resulting PDF's must reside in the same folder or the links are broken.
All in all I've been very pleased with the quality from this printing option. I like the fact that the Acrobat reader is on almost every machine out there (if not it's a known item and free). I find myself using PDF's to ditribute to clients as well as contractors. I haven't tried the dwf writer yet so I don't know what the rpinting issues are with print services but when sending AutoCad files to print services the hassle of plot files and the like is somethig I won't be missing.
The only drawback so far is the fact that links only take you to the sheet not to a specific view. ie if you have a sheet with multiple details the callout link on your building section sheet will take you to the sheet but not the specific detail. Wishlist maybe?