Surface pattern wont print... Or PDF...

[twiceroadsfool]

Very strange...



Ive got a surface pattern (Stone) on a wall in a Model, and when its visible on the sheet, in all of the viewports. When i plot to PDF, all of the surface patterns show up EXCEPT this one. Not one wall in particular, but everywhere this pattern is placed. What am i missing? It shows up in sections that are at a much larger scale... Is there something telling revit automatically not to print dense fill patterns at smaller scales?

[twiceroadsfool]

Okay, switching the Plot setting to Raster instead of Vector made it show up... As solid gray. Better than nothing at all, but ill have to keep playign with it.

Weird that the default Sand Drafting pattern will show up in Vector, but a custom Stone Model pattern will not. And raster plotting takes a loooooooong time.

[mmiles]

I had similar problems when I updated to RAC2008- it affected my title sheets, too, leaving out important tags and labels when printing to PDF, as well as to our Oce TDS450 Plotter.

Autodesk said my printer driver was out of date; Oce said the driver was fine and had me create a local port printer, that used a generic driver originally-later changed to an Oce...and my disappearing pattens and notes problem went away.

[twiceroadsfool]

I ended up switching the pattern to a drafting pattern, and the entire issue went away. It wasnt anything specifically scaled anyway, just a general stone hatch that we wanted to show at a specific scale.

Switching to Raster made it plot solid gray, so i assumed it was a pattern scalability issue, since the others were all plotting fine.

Switched to a drafting pattern with the same definition, and its fine...

[twiceroadsfool]

I take it back... Now the Drafting Pattern wont print at certain scales either.

WTF!!!

I have some drawings i have to plot, and they NEED this drafting pattern on them. All the other drafting patterns are plotting fine besides the stone hatch...

[twiceroadsfool]

< talk to myself > It appears to be a scale thing. When i made the fill pattern, i imported a custom PAT and loaded it at .25 scale. Loading it at .5 it now plots. Hrmm. < / talk to myself >

[bleonard]

that's quite a skill you've got - working out a solution in your own post!

We've had similar issues with patterns being too dense to print - Revit just won't show certain ones when they are too dense. Not sure I know of a decent work around besides what you've already discovered. However, this solution isn't always helpful when you're trying to keep a hatch to scale.

Perhaps others can chime in with a better solution.

Also - watch out for the good ole' oblique angled surfaces. They can cause trouble when it comes to printing too.

[twiceroadsfool]

Well, im curious as to where the issue is in Revit... Because the surface pattern IS present int he viewport, at that scale. If i zoom in, its there. If i Print Preview, its gone. The less dense patterns are fine.

So there must be some rubric it is using to determine max density to plot, and id sure love to know what it is, lol...