Dashed Gridlines not printing as on screen

[The Original Ssendam]

Hi All ...

I'm having an issue where what I see on screen is not what is printed and it's driving me nuts.

I'm putting a rectangular grid on an A4 sheet of 5mm squares.

The grid lines are dashed so that the lines from the sides of each square but never cross.

I also applied a 'roughen' effect so it looks more hand drawn.

This is perfect on screen, but when I print it outthe dashed lines go out of sync and end up crossing over each other as you go from the top left to the bottom right of the sheet.

I've tried saving it as a pdf file and the same thing happens.  I made sure on the pdf that it printed actuual size.

Anyone any ideas how it's going wrong? I tried to attach the .ai file but the system didn't let me 😞

[sishamIAGD]

Have you tried making a copy of the file then outlining the stroke effect you have then printing..?

[Disposition_Dev]

like @sishamDDS says, while strokes are "live" they can change given certain circumstances.. Try expanding the strokes using the menu item Object > Expand and check the box for "stroke".

[The Original Ssendam]

OK so I selected the object (the grid) and then Object>Expand.  The Fill and the Stroke checkboxes were ticked.

For giggles I unchecked both, printed and it didn't work. However, when I went into the same menu they were ticked again ... wierd.  So I then unticked just the Fill box printed and it works! Oddly, I try to Object>Expand again and it won't open the menu?

I know it now works, but no idea why.

[Disposition_Dev · Accepted solution]

That's odd that it didn't work when you had "fill" checked.. i don't have an answer to that..

But as to the "trying again" thing, the Expand dialog is contextual. If your selection has nothing to expand (i.e, no live strokes/patterns/effect), the dialog will not show up. This is helpful in that you can know for sure that your object is fully expanded.

Also, i just read your post again and now i understand the issue. When you opened the expand dialog, it was "suggesting" which settings to use when expanding it. Those checkboxes don't indicate whether something is currently expanded, they indicate what expansion options are available. 

And as to your last point, the quick and dirty answer is that live strokes are rendered at different times. So you may see one appearance in the UI, but it may be rendered differently during save or export for any number of reasons.. When you "expand" an object, you are telling illustrator "don't render these strokes mathematically, but instead, just draw points at all the corners and make a well defined shape so that nothing needs to be interpreted. 

I'm not sure whether that was helpful, but at the moment that's the best explanation i've got. Hope it helps.

[The Original Ssendam]

Thanks ... I think there are a lot of moving parts for me in this and I think I understand what's going on, but in any event it did work! so Huzzah!