Why won't our standard KIP, MetaPrint, or Océ software process some PDF files?

 

Most wide-format plotter manufacturers use Ghostscript for the PDF to TIFF conversion.  Ghostscript is primarily designed to convert files that are 11x17 and smaller. Using it for wide-format engineering size drawings is outside the scope of the application. One of the most common wide-format plot settings architect and engineers have enabled for plotting is a setting called “lines merge”. This is where overlapping CAD lines and fills are transparent in either the PLT, PDF, or DWF file. AcroPlot Pro software for converting AutoCAD DWG files to PDF or DWF files supports this setting in the PDF and DWF files it creates—Adobe Acrobat does not. While creating PDF files that contain transparencies is not new to the PDF file format, plotting this type of PDF on a wide-format plotter is. Since Ghostscript is not designed to convert PDF’s containing transparencies it take ten times longer to convert to TIFF. AcroPlot Repro is specifically designed to convert a PDF or a DWF that does contain transparencies to TIFF.