Hey guys -

I bought the 20th Anniversary Corebook (along with Arsenal and Unwired) a week or so ago. I'm trying to print a copy of the Corebook so I can have a physical copy. I work in a print shop and have access to machines that can print just about anything - but for some reason I can't get this PDF to print. I checked the permissions, and printing is allowed. I've even tried to flatten the document with JavaScript to no avail. When I send the PDF to print, it takes FOREVER to get to the printer. Once there, it will only run 5 to 10 pages before faulting out. Anyone else have any problems printing any of the purchased PDFs?

I e-mailed the Battle Corps website via the provided e-mail address in my receipt, but I know sometimes it can take customer service quite a while to get back on anything - so I figured I'd see if anyone on here has had the same issue.

Thanks!

Have you tried printing only one or two pages? Printing such a huge and complex PDF can quickly overwhelm a printer.

I thought about that - but we sent PDFs over that are well over 2,000 pages and they run just fine. I could be just because this book has so many graphics. I could try breaking it down into 50 page sections or something. Guess I'm being lazy, heh. I'll try that.

Are you dual-printing (printing on both sides)? That could also be a problem. Some printers may default when trying to dual-print, especially with color graphics on the page(s). You may have to scale back to 25, or even 10 pages per run.
Or you may have to do it manually.

There have been problems in the past with the graphics layers. They also use a lot of memory, but that's unlikely to be the problem in a print shop.

Yah, that's what's throwing us off ("us" as in I've recruited other employees into the issue). Duplexing (printing on both sides) doesn't effect the memory of our printers. I'm really thinking it's to do with the layers. I've tried different methods of flattening - but the funny thing is - When I'm in Acrobat, the document doesn't show any layers in the layer tab.... I'm just going to try printing it a few pages at a time. Had I known it would have been this much of a hassle, I woulda' just bought the books.

EDIT - Forgot to mention; I'm only printing the covers as color (on card stock). Doing the body in B&W - So in theory, that should reduce the memory issue even further. Going to finish it off with a comb bind. Another employee just suggested another way to flatten it, which I think will work. We use Xerox printers (mostly), and they typically work in a format called RDO. When you print from a PDF to a Xerox printer through Xerox's program Free Flow, it hangs out on the printer queue as a PDF. BUT, if you send it back from the printer to another computer on the network with Free Flow, that queue converts it to a flat, solid image as RDO - Totally eliminates the layers. Wow... I just rambled about some stuff ya'll probably don't give a damn about.

I've had problems with some specific pages, although I can't remember which ones. The printer I usually use is a PS printer, but the same pages printed fine on a small HP Color LaserJet 2605, although a lot slower.

I've also experince the opposite, that the HP2605 failed to print certain pages, while the big PS printer printe fine.

It could always be narrowed down to a speficik page.

Lars

True, I encountered a couple PS driver errors with a few of the Missions. Switching drivers or the printers sometimes worked.

I finally got it to print - On one of the full color machines. Printed straight from the PDF. This particular color machine actually utilizes PDF's format to print, and not a post script, like the RDO format on the other printer. The Battle Corps people actually got back to me same-day with the following:

"Are you by chance working with a Mac? If so, open the PDF and print from Preview. Our shop runs almost exclusively Mac so we have had problems with printing with Acrobat. If you are working with a PC simply set it to print smaller sections at a time (because you are probably filling the buffer). If you are using a print server, you can place the book on the server and print it from there. I hope this helps, but if it doesn't please let me know and we will help you further to resolve them."

Didn't help me any, since I was in fact using Acrobat and didn't have access to a Mac at work. Oh well, I have my book in hand now. I can finally learn the new system without having to sit in front of the computer.


PS - Thank you all for your input.

I've had nightmares trying to print out SR4 pdf's. One even got me blacklisted from a print shop for good, because of how badly it jammed up their works. Adam was quite helpful with the On the Run pdf, but it was still quite the fight to get it onto paper.

On my end, I haven't had any major issues printing out SR4A [on a HP2605dn], and I did so a few times during the construction process [generally from PDFs, not right out of InDesign.]

I don't echo Catalyst's advice to use Preview on a Mac, though: Preview is getting better, but when dealing with robust files, Acrobat is still better and more consistent.