Printing vector drawings as vector?
roflo1
🖼️ 3 images Surveyor
This is an odd question, and perhaps the answer will involve some historical background.
I've noticed that when I printed a map in the FRIA (I usually print to PDF) the map itself is rendered in the PDF as vector.
However, the same map in CC3+ is printed as raster. For example, I did this simple test in CC3+ and when I zoom into the PDF I get this:
Now, I decided to open the same test in FRIA and, again, printed to PDF. When I zoom in I get this:
(BTW, I'm already amazed just for the fact that FRIA successfully opened the "map")
If I zoom further I will notice the polygons, but that's about it:
I can still see things in their glorious nearly-lossless vector form.
I further confirmed this by opening both PDFs in Scribus and examining the contents.
I consider myself lucky to own FRIA, but... is there a way to "print as vector" from within CC3+?
Comments
Effects in CC3+ are inherently raster operations and require the map to be printed as a raster map. There weren't bitmap symbols in CC2 (or the FRIA, which dates from that time), meaning that everything was issued to the printer driver as vector blocks just as they are drawn to the screen in the OS. In CC3 and later, everything is issued to the printer just as it is drawn on the screen in the OS: as a fully-assembled raster image.
You may be able to copy and paste vector items from CC3 into another vector program, but I haven't tried that. You might be able to export the drawing as an AutoCAD DXF file and then import or print that file. However, in both cases you'll be missing any bitmap fills, which will include bitmap symbols.
Thanks for the response.
Yes, I assumed that all bets would be off if I enabled effects or used raster symbols. My hope was that there was still some way to print vector-only maps in such a way.
You may be able to copy and paste vector items from CC3 into another vector program, but I haven't tried that. You might be able to export the drawing as an AutoCAD DXF file and then import or print that file.
Just out of curiosity I opened my (vector-only) sample above in CC3Viewer, but no luck (probably expected).
You've stumbled upon the very first issue I had myself when upgrading from CC2 Pro to CC3 when that was new. I still miss that functionality because making zoomable pdf files was great.
Joe has already covered why it has to be like this in CC3+, but if you have a pure vector map with no effects in it that you need to print this way, remember that the FR Atlas IS a general purpose viewer (as you already saw). You can open files created in CC3+ there. Effects and raster artwork (both symbols and fills) will be missing obviously, but if you only need the vector entities, that works just fine.