topic Line thickness in layout & export in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Line thickness in layout & export

Göran — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 12:15:23 GMT

I have noticed often that in layoutview and exports from layoutview ArcGIS (currently ArcGIS Pro but problem occured in ArcMap aswell) seems to have problem with thin lines. Is there a solution to this?

My heightcurves have been set to line thickness of 0,14 and 0,4 respectively but in the output they all seem to be set to 1 pt thickness.

Dataview:

Layoutview:

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

DanPatterson — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 12:29:11 GMT

hmmm this reminds me of

Visual differences in imported map documents—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

in the Design lines for a specific resolution (dpi) section

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

Robert_LeClair — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 15:54:11 GMT

There is a bug report about this but the user saw it with polygon outlines. Seems related to this question though - BUG-000124915 : The polygon outline width of less than 1 pt is increased to 1 pt thickness in an exported PDF file when using the 'Export Map to File' function on the Share tab in the ArcGIS Pro ribbon.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

Göran — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 10:33:01 GMT

Hmm. Yeah this could be related. Though my map ain't a import from ArcMap its rather the differences in different views within ArcGIS Pro.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

Göran — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 10:36:32 GMT

If I read that bugreport correctly it only identified a different in the exported PDF while the difference I experience happen already within ArcGIS Pro (and persists into the exported PDF).

In ArcMap I have experienced exported lines to be thicker and when opened in Adobe Illustrator I can see that they have a lower thickness value when I select the induvidual lines but they where anyhow presented as 1 pt thickness. In that map selecting the lines in question in Adobe Illustrater and 'change' them to the same line thickness as they reported as succesfully changed their thickness.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

Anonymous User — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 17:23:37 GMT

I had a very similar problem and am using ArcGIS Pro. The only solution that worked for me was printing the layout instead of exporting it. When I printed it, the line thickness remained as I set it up on the map and I was still able to get a PDF as the end product.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

AJD1988 — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 06:22:01 GMT

Hi, new ArcGIS Pro user here. The solution I've found to this problem is to select the option "Output as image" in the export pane. Line thicknesses are maintained using this option. Not an ideal solution, but it works. Now, if they could just fix the legend issue (i.e. have the ability to add/remove symbols manually)...

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

JocelynTutak — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 22:08:36 GMT

Thanks for sharing this fix! This problem has been plaguing me on a few projects, and this solved the issue.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

AlexVerville — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 07:59:35 GMT

I have this same issue, huge pain for contours. What is happening is the PDF viewer is enhancing thin lines since sometimes thin lines can just appear blank. I don't have the Pro version, but in Adobe Acrobat Reader you can go to Edit > Preferences > Page Display > Enhance Thin Lines and turn that off to fix this. I use Foxit PhantomPDF though and can't find a setting. Like someone else said, if you don't need the PDF functionality to edit text and stuff, you can just export as an image to avoid all of this.

The thing I can't figure out is why this happens with my maps, but not my colleague's. There must be something on ArcGIS Pro's side that is triggering the PDF viewers to do this.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

MarkMathews — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 04:38:48 GMT

I have had this issue forever and finally figured it out.. you don't need to output as image. For image compression set to 'deflate', keep 'compress vector graphics' on, set the resolution to 600dpi, embed fonts, and the most important step is to turn on 'simulate overprint'. The output file size varies, but if you are just using vector graphics and no background imagery it keeps the files size small..

The simulate overprint setting is what keeps the line thicknesses the same but I found that with 300 dpi very thin lines still appeared grainy until zoomed in on.. With the simulate overprint on you can mess with the other settings to get the file size you want.. deflate keeps things the most crisp but file size goes way up. Now I can add a notebook and paste in the script to batch print all layouts at once!

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

MarkMathews — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 04:42:15 GMT

After messing with it more, if you have an aerial background.. I found that using the default JPEG2000 compression and 85% quality with overprint on and 300dpi works very well with file size and quality.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

AlexVerville — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 14:57:30 GMT

Thanks for the insight. I tried turning on "Simulate overprint" and even with "Output as image" unchecked, it outputs an image. That's why when you zoom in on the lines they appear grainy and also if you try to edit text in the PDF you won't be able to. Unfortunately this setting does not solve the problem but its good to know that the "Simulate overprint" option does something completely different than what ESRI says it does.

Re: Line thickness in layout & export

rogue_recon — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 20:10:14 GMT

This is the fix. THANK YOU!!!