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 Post subject: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix it
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 8:56 am 
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Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2022 8:53 am
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Location: Indiana
This one really drives me up a wall. When trying to make a PDF of a large SKM file, sometimes it will move half of the oneline off the page. I asked SKM for a "patch" and they sent a response of "here's a couple work-arounds." They said to lower the DPI of the PDF printing, and while that does center the oneline much of time, it creates some really bad kerning which looks incredibly unprofessional. They also suggested I break the oneline up and print it in sections; this seems unacceptable to me, I want the oneline of the whole system. They also suggested I print it on a smaller sheet size and then scale it up to make it fit the sheet size I want, again this feels like a BS response when they could easily just fix the root issue.

After searching online, I found that they have known about this issue at least since 2017, when we were on Version 7. It's so frustrating that they want us to pay for all these features, and they can't even get some basic function to work.

Does anyone have a good method for handling this issue?

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 Post subject: Re: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 9:01 am 
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Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:01 am
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I have had this exact issue more than once. It is frustrating and no, I don't know of a good solution.

I have tried using smaller and larger paper sizes which didn't help. I've only had luck with condensing the one-line footprint as much as possible and moving the whole thing around in the one-line "palette"? area which is a pain and takes a lot of messing around to get it to work, if you're lucky.

You are right, it shouldn't be that way.

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 Post subject: Re: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 9:15 am 
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Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2022 8:53 am
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Location: Indiana
bbaumer wrote:
I have had this exact issue more than once. It is frustrating and no, I don't know of a good solution.


Thanks Brent, good to know I'm not the only one.

I'm considering just exporting the oneline to AutoCAD every time and printing from there, but that is just another unnecessary step and it loses the color information. But at least I wouldn't spend 1/2 hour trying to print one drawing...

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 Post subject: Re: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 9:16 am 

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I have had luck exporting the one-line to a DXF file and then plotting from AutoCAD.


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 Post subject: Re: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 10:26 am 
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I haven't tried this yet but next time I have troubles I'll try printing to Nitro PDF or Microsoft PDF instead of SKM PDF.

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 Post subject: Re: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 11:03 am 
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I have used both SKMPDF and Bluebeam PDF, both have the same results. So it's not an issue with their PDF maker, it's the program itself.

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 Post subject: Re: Printing PDF's in PTW, SKM knows about issue, won't fix
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2026 12:45 pm 
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In another life, we did not use the SKM 1-lines for that reason. I don't recall the exact procedure (some script was involved), but we were able to use a ACAD dxf file, import the data to the ACAD 1-line, and finally print to an ACAD dwg.

Sorry...don't ask me how it was done. I don't recall!

Mike


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