OLE to PDF poor quality

[lucidos02224]

I am trying to print drawings to a pdf file which include excel spreadsheets pasted into the file as ole objects. When I create the pdf file the objects that were pasted in appear to be rasterized and the quality is extremely poor.
I have tried each setting on the properties bar and have also tried changing settings within the printer/plotter config and that does not work.

I have tried to find a variable which controls this in AutoCAD or a printer setting but have been unsuccessful. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[cadtag]

dont' use Ole'?

Seriously, OLE is really not a good technology for CAD. It sorta works, but only sorta. Pretty much anything you can do with OLE, you can do better with other tools available either natively in AutoCAD or via 3rd party.

[rkmcswain]

dont' use Ole'?

Seriously, OLE is really not a good technology for CAD. It sorta works, but only sorta. Pretty much anything you can do with OLE, you can do better with other tools available either natively in AutoCAD or via 3rd party.

I agree with that.

[lucidos02224]

I really do not have a choice on this. I am instructed to post the data as it is submitted, I could convert to a table but that would be a larger amount of time than just pasting the object in.

A third party developer responded to me with this: AutoCAD will not print OLE objects as text on files that are not printed in portrait mode. While this accounts for perhaps 2% of all AutoCAD files, OLE objects for most CAD documents will be rastered. This is a limitation of AutoCAD.

[rkmcswain]

Just a note:

Although I don't recommend OLE, I did recently work on some existing drawings where the author had created some OLE tables from Excel. Our output format was PDF, using the built in DWG-to-PDF.PC3 file and there were no problems in this case. These are 11x17 landscape.

[lucidos02224]

ok Thanks. I have tried it with the same settings you have and I still get the same result that's why I thought it may have been some setting within AutoCAD that I was unaware of. It works on one cad station here but not on the other two, printing using the same settings off a network pc3 file.

[kimlance]

Hi,

When you created the pdf did you also print out a hard copy to view it. I've noticed sometimes our spreadsheets look all distorted in the pdf but when I print it out it looks fine.

[rkmcswain]

Hi,

When you created the pdf did you also print out a hard copy to view it. I've noticed sometimes our spreadsheets look all distorted in the pdf but when I print it out it looks fine.

Now that you mention that, we have run into the opposite lately.

Seemingly good PDF files that print with errors. Errors that are not present when you view the PDF in Acrobat Reader. The ones I have seen have been created with both AutoCAD and ESRI ArcMap.

[lucidos02224]

Prints look great printing from AutoCAD not from the PDF. The pdf quality is poor and prints look bad as well. My problem is reports and figures are being sent out electronically, therefore I cannot send the pdf files with the poor quality as printing from the pdf file will not work.

I do know that if I print portrait the tables come out as text and are not rasterized. Not sure why causes this. If I can find an example I will forward it along.

[jaberwok]

Are you trying to plt to pdf in landscape format?
If so, don't. Set the pdf driver to plot to portrait and juggle (rotate) the input to suit.