I had an issue that I fought with for way too long. Opening a support ticket got me half way there, and after some more time I managed to solve the rest of the issue for myself. I wanted to post it here in case others have the same issue and find the info below helpful. First some background: I wanted to start using the FoxIt PhantomPDF printer as our standard way for creating PDFs from AutoCAD. I won’t go into those details, but in AutoCAD 2016 AutoDesk screwed up the PDF generation feature they had, and they did not provide a way to disable it at this time. If interested just search google for 'AutoCAD 2016 PDFs SHX Fonts Comment Boxes' or something similar and you can find out about that issue. Most of our users had no problems using the FoxIt PhantomPDF virtual printer to create PDFs.
However, we had a couple that AutoCAD would crash as soon as that printer is selected - an error message would pop up and AutoCAD automatically closed out. We experienced this with AutoCAD 2015 and 2016, but I imagine it effects other versions as well.
I tried all sorts of things to fix this with no luck – uninstalling/reinstalling FoxIt PhantomPDF, uninstalling/reinstalling AutoCAD, logging in as a different user under Windows, different AutoCAD profiles, etc. Eventually I submitted a support ticket. Support indicated they had seen the issue and that their workaround was removing any custom paper sizes in the FoxIt PhantomPDF Printer settings (doing this from another program or the Windows Printer settings obviously). Removing these custom paper sizes did make the crashing stop for me.
However, we typically use AutoCAD for large drawings, so we do need some custom sizes. So I added the sizes back one at a time. The first few worked fine, but eventually one made the crash event return. Removing the last one would make the issue go away again.
It didn't matter what the name or size of that last custom paper size was - adding it would cause the crash problem to return. I noticed this machine has some extra “standard” paper sizes that our other machines did not have. So I went into Print Management under Administrative Tools (under the start menu or control panel depending on your setup). I navigated to Print Management, Print Servers, My Computer Name, and clicked on Forms. There is a list of a bunch of standard sizes in there. I was able to delete a few of the User Defined sizes that were no longer needed (may have been left over from an old printer or uninstalled program). After doing this, I was able to add the additional custom paper sizes in the FoxIt PhantomPDF printer without the crash event returning.
Solved Pdf Print Issues With Autocad Lite For Mac
I counted the number of forms in the list under Print Management. If you have 255 or fewer sizes listed AutoCAD will not crash, but when 256 or more are listed in here AutoCAD will crash when FoxIt PhantomPDF Printer is selected.
Keep in mind adding a custom size in FoxIt Phantom PDF will add one to this list under Print Management as well. Hopefully this helps someone save some time.
Is anyone else having an issue plotting in 2018? Screenshot is attached. When I press plot, it appears to plot although no window pops up for me to name the file and select where on my computer it goes. I have no idea where these files go, I haven't been able to find anything on my computer.
If I want to save a PDF, I've read on other posts that there's a 'save as PDF' button on the lower left portion of the window. But that button isn't there for me. The only workaround I've been able to come up with is to Preview the PDF, then save it with a file name and destination but I would rather not have to do that extra step.