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Wrecka-D
Participant
January 26, 2018
Question

Exporting to PDF makes line weights appear thicker

  • January 26, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 3336 views

Hi,

I'm an architectural student, currently working on my portfolio. In this portfolio there are many drawings with specific line weights.

When I export to PDF directly from AutoCAD and view the drawings in Adobe Acrobat, the line weights are properly displayed.

HOWEVER, Here's my problem;
If I place the  AutoCAD-PDFs in an InDesign document and export them again with absolute maximum PDF quality, the line weights are then displayed incorrectly in Acrobat (they all get alot thicker and a bit messy). The line weight information is not lost though, which can be seen by printing the PDF on paper or zooming in while in Acrobat. This means that the PDF files made by Indesign have a different script for how they are to be viewed on screen.

Now I know that some of you might say that I need to use the setting "Fix Hairlines" in Adobe Acrobat. Even though that works, I don't want to rely on the assumption that people viewing my work know that they can adjust their own Acrobat settings.

I also don't want to rasterize my drawings as high resolution images, I would like them to be real vector lines.

My point;

I want the PDF-file created with InDesign to take care of the view settings itself, as the AutoCAD-PDFs do.

Does anyone know how? Thanks.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

rohankkashikar
Participant
September 29, 2019

I'm facing the same problem, any solutions??

rob day
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 26, 2018

The only control you have with an export from InDesign is setting the initial view percentage, which was added in InDesign CC2015.

The zoom percentage does matter for line display so if you are comparing an InDesign export with an AutoCad export make sure the view percentage is the same for both. If your client is viewing in a browser, the saved initial zoom view setting won't be honored.

Also Acrobat Reader and Pro have a Page Display preference which will affect line anti-aliasing, but those are application preferences and don't get saved with a document, so in the end you really can't control your client's view or preference choices.