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Question

How to print thin lines of a pdf?

Forum|Forum|4 days ago
August 27, 2026
3 replies
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I saw this topic, I want to know if this is resolved

l have a drawing pdf that has thicker lines than the original in the CAD software

I want to make print the pdf after I press cntrl+5

How do I print drawing with thin lines?

A

athletic_future2d15Author

Participant

Hi Anand,

I’m using windows 11
Adobe acrobat reader version 2026

The drawing is from a CAD software Creo Parametric.

Originally the lines in the CAD software is thin
but when I export it, it becomes thick.

I will try out some of your suggestions. I will print out the drawings and see how it turns out.

I will let you know if any other problems occur in adobe.

Thank You

Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @athletic_future2d15

Thanks for the details. Please let us know how it goes after trying the suggestions.

Also, as you mentioned, you are using the freeware Acrobat Reader app. Please note that free Acrobat Reader cannot thin these lines. The width is now baked into the PDF, and Reader is a viewer only, it has no Preflight, no Fix Hairlines, and no line-editing tools (those are Acrobat Pro). The Enhance Thin Lines and Line Weights (Ctrl+5) options in Acrobat only change how lines look on screen, not the actual width in the file or on paper, so they will not solve a genuinely thick line. So printing from Reader will reproduce whatever Creo exported.

Also, the real fix is in Creo's PDF export. Creo does not store a true line width for the geometry in your views; it assigns each entity type a colour, and at PDF export, each colour maps to a pen with a thickness. Without a pen table (or with a heavy default pen), the geometry pen comes out much heavier than the thin lines you see on screen. Control it like this:

Create a small pen table text file, for example table.pnt, with a thin thickness for the geometry colour. Thickness must be in inches or centimetres, not mm. A good starting line is:
pen 1 thickness .010 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; drawing_color
then adjust down toward about .002 in until it looks right.
Tell Creo to use it. In config.pro add:
pen_table_file <path>\table.pnt
pdf_use_pentable yes
Or, in the export dialog (File > Save As > Save a Copy > PDF), on the General tab of PDF Export Settings, tick "Use pentable."
Re-export the PDF and open it in Reader. The lines should now be thin without needing any display tricks. Do a test print to confirm.

One caution: if a pen defines a thickness, it overrides any width you set on screen for entities of that colour, so tune the pen values rather than the on-screen display.

I hope this helps, and let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @athletic_future2d15,

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out. We're sorry for the trouble you had.

Could you please share more details about the issue? Are you on a Windows machine or a Mac, and what is the OS version? What is the version of Acrobat installed? Check from Menu (Windows) | Acrobat (Mac) > Help > About Adobe Acrobat.

Are the lines thick only on screen, or also on the actual printout? Which CAD software made the drawing, and how was the PDF created (Export to PDF, a DWG-to-PDF plotter, or the Adobe PDF printer)?

Please note that the Ctrl+5 you are pressing toggles Line Weights view, and the "Enhance thin lines" setting people often suggest is a Page Display preference. Both of these only change how lines look on screen, not how they print. Adobe is explicit that with Line Weights view off, Acrobat draws every stroke at one pixel regardless of zoom, but the stroke still prints at its true defined width. So neither of those will change your printed output.

If the lines are thick only on screen (they print fine)

This is just a display rendering. Go to Preferences > Page Display and untick "Enhance thin lines," and use Menu > View > Show/Hide > Rulers & Grids > Line Weights to show strokes at their defined width. Zoom to Actual Size (Ctrl+1, not Ctrl+5) for the truest on-screen preview. Your prints were already correct.

If they are also thick on the printed page

Then "thin lines" settings will not help, because the PDF genuinely contains those line widths.

Suggestions:

The CAD export/plot settings. This is the most common cause. The lineweights or the plot-style table (the CTB, for example, a monochrome or pen-assignment style) used when the drawing was exported are producing heavier lines than you see inside the CAD app. Fix the layer lineweights/plot style in the CAD software and re-export or re-plot the PDF. If printing directly from the CAD software looks correct, but the PDF does not, this is where the difference lives.
Acrobat Pro line tools (if you have Pro). Use Fix Hairlines, or Preflight's minimum-line-width fixup, to normalise stroke widths in the PDF. Work on a copy.
Printer driver. Many drivers have a "thin line enhancement" or "fine line" option that thickens lines. Check the driver's Advanced/Quality settings and turn it off.
As a test, Menu > File > Print > Advanced > Print As Image at 600 to 1200 dpi, which sometimes renders vector lines more faithfully.

You can also refer to these help articles and try the suggestions: https://adobe.ly/4y08kDb

https://adobe.ly/4xZxsKo

I hope this helps, and let us know how it goes. Please reach out if you experience any issues, or need any assistance.

Regards,

Anand Sri

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