Shadows and printing

[clog boy]

Why does it take so long to print four views with shadows on one big sheet?

More important, is there a way to fix it?

[Andre Carvalho]

Why does it take so long to print four views with shadows on one big sheet?

More important, is there a way to fix it?

Yep. And sometimes your printer will not be able to handle it...
What I do when it happens is to print to PDF and then send it to the printer rather than printing direct from Revit.

Andre Carvalho

[clog boy]

Yep. And sometimes your printer will not be able to handle it...
What I do when it happens is to print to PDF and then send it to the printer rather than printing direct from Revit.

Andre Carvalho

Nice. Does PDF printing take as long?
In our case when we forget to set raster settings to Medium, it will take twice as long and the last third of the sheet will print white.

[clog boy]

Hmm... printing to PDF doesn't seem to make much difference in time. I use CutePDF writer.

[Andre Carvalho]

Hmm... printing to PDF doesn't seem to make much difference in time. I use CutePDF writer.

What I was trying to say is if you try printing directly from Revit to the printer and after waiting forever you printer start printing and can't handle it (print blank sheets, or just half of it...), then to avoid starting over, we just print to PDF on situations like that. After the PDF is ready, you can send it to the printer easily and be sure the printer will handle it. Also, during this time your Revit is available to work and not stuck on the printing process...

But the time to send either to the printer or to the PDF will be almost the same, though.

Andre Carvalho

[gwnelson]

Right - print PDF's first. They still take forever, like trying to pour peanut butter from a jar, but when done you can spit them out in a flash from Adobe.

[Scott D Davis]

Solution: Upgrade to Revit 2009 when it comes out. There have been some great enhancements made in the processing of drawings for printing that greatly increase the speed.

[patricks]

Now that is good news! Should be just a few more weeks now!

[clog boy]

There have been some great enhancements made in the processing of drawings for printing that greatly increase the speed.

Two words: about friggin' time.
If they'd just improve shadow processing time in general, or let shadows just regenerate only if the model actually changed, I'd feel less compelled to make a 2D solution (filled region).

[Chad Smith]

Sorry to disappoint guys, but on the timed tests that I have done on my projects, printing from both 2008 and 2009 to PDF still come out in the same time. I have yet to come across a reduction in printing time :cry:.

[Andrew Dobson]

Solution: Upgrade to Revit 2009 when it comes out. There have been some great enhancements made in the processing of drawings for printing that greatly increase the speed.

Sounds like this justifies the upgrade price on its own!

[Andrew Dobson]

Sorry to disappoint guys, but on the timed tests that I have done on my projects, printing from both 2008 and 2009 to PDF still come out in the same time. I have yet to come across a reduction in printing time :cry:.

Doh!, Spoke too soon...

[clog boy]

Sorry to disappoint guys, but on the timed tests that I have done on my projects, printing from both 2008 and 2009 to PDF still come out in the same time. I have yet to come across a reduction in printing time :cry:.

Darn... thus my wish list item to make shadows 2D (like the Radiate button does) and only update when the model changes. OR implement DirectX support instead of that halfassed OpenGL support.


By the way, what's the release date for Revit 2009?

[Chad Smith]

Word on the street I think is 14/15 April.

[Andrew Dobson]

That reminds me, just submitted a wish I thought about a while ago and forgot about.

A button on the toolbar to globally turn off shadows like the lineweight button.

This would enable quick editing of the views, quick test prints etc.

[rmejia]

A button on the toolbar to globally turn off shadows like the lineweight button.


+1 vote for that

[clog boy]

+1 vote for that

+2 (one extra for my überfrustrated coworker)

[patricks]

Maybe a button to globally override shadows already turned on, but I wouldn't want to globally turn on shadows in all views at once. That would probably make our machines explode from the processing power and time required. :shock:

[Andrew Dobson]

Maybe a button to globally override shadows already turned on, but I wouldn't want to globally turn on shadows in all views at once. That would probably make our machines explode from the processing power and time required. :shock:

Thats what I had in mind "On if set in view" or "All off"