PDF quality issues

I am a bit new to AuoCAD, so please forgive me if I am missing something fundamental. My issue is with publish vs. export vs. plot. I am running AutoCAD Civil 3D 2010, I also have Acrobat Standard 9 on the machine as well. I am trying to avoid plotting every drawing individually to PDF, however when i use anything other than the "Adobe PDF" the letters appear to be fuzzy in the PDF. when I zoom in or print, they are fine, it is only an issue when the document is viewed as a full page on the computer screen.

Every drawing is the same size, the same scale, and should be able to be plotted together.

While creating each PDF individually is possible, and for now my only option to avoid fuzzy letters, it seems to me archaic and an incredible waste of time. Do I really need to be doing this 1 layout at a time in 2011?

-price

publishcollate -system variable

Controls whether sheets are published as a single job

Publishing sheets as a single job requires all of the following:

• A plot or PDF driver that supports the multi-sheet plotting or printing option
  
• The page setup override option is selected, if publishing from the Sheet Set Manager.
  

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A published sheet set is processed one sheet at a time. Separate PLT and PDF files are created for each sheet. If the sheet set is published, the sheets might be interleaved with other plot jobs.

1

A published sheet set is processed as a single job. A multi-sheet PLT or PDF file is created. If the sheet set is published, it is never interleaved with other plot jobs.

I am not very familiar with the sheet set manager (yet). All of the sheets are different layouts in the same drawing. Does that change anything when using the PUBLISHCOLLATE?

You don't need to use sheet set manager to utilize 'publish'. Publishcollate is a system variable that needs to be set to 1 in order for it to publish to one single PDF file.

When you are in paperspace in a layout tab - right click on the tab and go to Page Setup Manager. select 'NEW'; name your page setup and select 'none'. Then the dialog box you get will be like the plot dialog box and you can select your 'printer' (Adobe PDF). When you do you can go to properties and increase the dpi/quality of the output. Set your paer size and other parameters and then select 'ok'. That will give you a preset PDF 'Printer' to choose when you what to publish a group of drawings or layouts.

Thank you for the response, and I have tried everything you discussed. Unfortunately, the text and overall image quality of the PDF when

fit to screen is less than when I plot each page individually.

I can correct the issue in Adobe by using the OCR text recognition tool. It seems to work, but is an necessary second step.

I am also aware of the option to send "truetype" as text rather than graphics. I checked the box as I was testing your suggestions, and it does not seem to have affected the quality of the PDF.

Lastly, increasing the dpi does not seem to have an affect either. My last attempt was at 120 DPI.

Any more ideas?

First - I had similar problems once with large drawings that were done 1:1 and had to scale them to fit into an 11x17 'frame' in modelspace in order for them to PDF clearly. Not a good fix as a rule, but they were for an illustration in a Bid folder and didn't need to be more than just a 'graphic' cartoon.

Second - I have used a program called Acroplot Pro. It will batch convert dwg to pdf with very high quality output. You can get the trial download for 30 days for free and it is a very reasonable price with really good price break at 5 seats.

That's all I can suggest at this point unless you are able to upload the file and see if I or anyone else can work out the problem and get back with you.