This page will try to diagnose common problems with plotting and explain the solutions that usually fix those issues. These unfortunately won’t cover all circumstances, so if you don’t see your issue here, or the solutions don’t work for you, please see the AT staff, or fill out a support ticket.
My file is taking too long to print as a PDF.
Most likely, your computer is taking a long time processing layered effects when producing your file. This is common with files with large numbers of vector files that have different effects that impact other geometry (transparency, glow, shadows, patterns, etc.)
My colors/lineweights/gradients don’t match my screen.
Please print a test strip and adjust your file accordingly. Please keep in mind that most printers will provide a less vibrant image and finer lines than your monitors. The only way to ensure a clear color/linescale match is to adjust your monitor’s colors manually to a result from the intended printer/paper type/media profile. After you’ve made those changes, you should be able to approximate colors closely, but keep in mind that lighting conditions where your prints are hung or switching to another type of paper or printer will dramatically impact how those colors appear.
I’m seeing an orange error message when I send my print.
Try rasterizing your PDF from Acrobat. Go to the top left Menu button and choose Export a PDF and Image. Choose your preferred file format. As long as you don’t compress your file, there’s no functional difference between them.
Make sure you’re embedding any color profiles, then choose resolution and colorspace. For small-format documents, 300-600 pixels/inch is reasonable. Keep in mind that finer lineweights may disappear at high resolutions. for large format documents 150 pixels/inch is usually more than acceptable. Anything higher than 300 will take an extremely long time to produce and may fail to produce anything. All raster filetypes have a maximum width in any dimension of 30,000 pixels.
Open the resulting image in Acrobat by right-clicking on the image file and choosing the Convert to Adobe PDF option. If you exported a multi-page document this way, select all the images exported and use the Combine files in Acrobat option.