Mysterious Black Lines when Printing

[M29]

When I go to plot my sheets, these random lines appear (they continue along the bottom edge of each no-plot viewport).

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks a mil.

[Dana W]

Check to see if your viewport border is extended beyond the printable area of your paper (the dashed line) AutoCAD will sometimes stick a line in along the edge of the plot if the viewport edge is beyond the printable area.

[M29]

I've attached a jpeg of my issue. See all these viewports? They all have a line along the bottom edge of the "no plot" viewport layer outline.

 

[Dana W]

Nope - That's different than I was refering to. Not sure what you have there.

 

Do your viewports overlap by any chance? I tried to recreate it in one of my drawings to no avail.

 

Can you attach your drawing? Someone might be able to find what's up by poking around in it. You can copy it to a new drawing and delete the title block info for privacy, if you want.

[M29]

No the viewports do not overlap.

 

Ok well if I have time in a bit I'll attach that dwg. In the mean time, keep the ideas coming, you guys are great!!

[M29]

Ok I just tried to attach the dwg and the two xrefs that the main drawing refers to. Let me know if this worked or if you need anything else... thanks!

 

mysterious_lines_test.dwg

mysterious_lines_test_xref2.dwg

mysterious_lines_test_xref1.dwg

[Dana W]

Sorry, its a day off.

 

I tried a plot to a pdf. It showed no whacky lines. Maybe it is how your plotter driver and/or the 4 year old software reacts to the edges of the viewports. There seems to be a positional relationship between the random lines on your jpg and the bottom edges of your viewports. Not being able to re-create the issue, leaves me in the dark. I am still clueless beyond this point.

[M29]

Wow. Thanks for looking into this Dana. I wonder if there is anyone else that has seen these random lines, that don't have an apparent origin.... WEIRD.

[Dana W]

Wow. Thanks for looking into this Dana. I wonder if there is anyone else that has seen these random lines, that don't have an apparent origin.... WEIRD.

 

I have had similar lines appear on a job about 2 years ago using acad 2007. That is why I had an interest in your thread, but my problem was that my viewport edge was outside the printable area of my paper, so either autocad or the plotter created an edge or frame where I went out of bounds.

 

Can you mate your viewports up adjacent to each other, make them touch, without revealing any more of model space than you want? Since the weird lines have the same amount of vertical displacement from each other as the bottom lines of your viewports do, I am thinking somthing is confusing autocad about where the edges of your viewports are.