Wrong font on consultant's PDF's from print shop

[patricks]

We recently completed a document set, where we and all our consultants were using the same Revit title block family, all with the same fonts. They sent me their PDF sheets, which all looked correct, which I combined in with my PDF sheets. Then we sent that whole PDF to a print shop to have it printed. When it came back, everything using the Century Gothic font looked wrong, more like Times New Roman.

We emailed the print shop with the Century Gothic font, and they re-printed a set for us. It all came back looking correct, EXCEPT the structural sheets. For some reason the structural sheets still had what looked like a Times font where Century Gothic should have been.

What could have caused this, if it was a single PDF file, with all sheets made from Revit using the same title block family?

*edit* Everyone including us is using Adobe Acrobat for the PDF writer.

[MikeJarosz]

Are you using the Century Gothic that comes free with Windows? It is wise to not use purchased custom fonts that are not available free in Windows. Some software, when it encounters a font it doesn't recognize, substitutes another. This typically happens when you send jobs to blueprinters with proprietary fonts embedded within the files. The software substitutes and you get 1000 useless copies. I once sent out a report the size of a phone book for reproduction with the custom font DiDiFont embedded. MS Word at the printer substituted a font that was more appropriate for a circus poster than arch specifications! We had 20 useless copies of our specs! Check out these previous posts on font problems:

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?140364-Custom-Fonts&highlight=fonts+copyright

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?30500-Text-not-WYSIWYG/page2&highlight=fonts+copyright

[david_peterson]

We ran into an issue with PDF Xchange. Out of the box it doesn't embed the fonts in to the pdf.
It just went to a default font of some kind.
Just a thought.

[patricks]

Out on vacation last week so just now getting back to this.

I still don't understand why all sheets came back correct except those structural sheets. Everyone was using the same title block family in their Revit files, and everyone used Acrobat to create the PDF's. But the structural sheets (a few sheets out of the total combined construction document PDF file) ended up with some kind of Serif font used for the project title and sheet numbers. Our drawings and MP&E drawings all have the correct Century Gothic font showing.

As far as I know Century Gothic is a standard Windows font.

[david_peterson]

We use Arial for most of our stuff.
And for some reason our problem was with the set up of the pdf writer and sending to the plotter.
The pdfs would look perfect on your screen, but because the pdf writer wasn't embedding the fonts in the pdf, those sheets would print with a different font.
Short of that I have no idea how that could happen.
I would try to create all the pdfs from the same workstation if possible. If they all look and print fine, that narrows it down to a workstation/driver problem and not a revit problem.
Just a thought.

[patricks]

We use Arial for most of our stuff.
And for some reason our problem was with the set up of the pdf writer and sending to the plotter.
The pdfs would look perfect on your screen, but because the pdf writer wasn't embedding the fonts in the pdf, those sheets would print with a different font.
Short of that I have no idea how that could happen.
I would try to create all the pdfs from the same workstation if possible. If they all look and print fine, that narrows it down to a workstation/driver problem and not a revit problem.
Just a thought.

They all print fine at our office. There would be no way to know unless the print shop prints another set, and IMHO it's not worth it for the title block font on a few sheets.