DDP labels shifted after export to PDF

[Anonymous User]

Original User: alnesbit

Hello all,

Hope I got the right forum. I am using 10.1 and maplex labeling. I have found that when I go to export data driven pages from a congested area of my map the labels might look fine on my screen and do not overlap but once I open up the PDF after it has exported the labels are overlapping. What you see is not what you get. I'm going to attach a screen shot and a PDF. This is annoying, frustrating, and a waste of time as I never know what I'm going to get and have to look at the PDF to see that I need to make adjustments to my label properties for this one page. Or I break the DDP and export this one page. Or I export this one page with labels locked. Then use a third-party software to merge my PDF pages into one PDF.

Can someone from ESRI confirm and has anyone else seen this problem?

Thank you,

[Anonymous User]

Original User: jbarrette

Here is a response I got from one of our export specialist and they offer a possible solution.

Shifting on export is a longstanding problem. People tend to see it with more dramatic effect in their labels because a one pixel shift of one point relative to another can completely change how everything is labeled. The shift is usually a side effect of our reliance on windows GDI for graphics and rounding errors in the integer math we must use there. This can sometimes be mitigated by changing the default printer on the machine to be a laser printer instead of no printer or instead of the XPS document writer. Windows GDI uses the default printer during high resolution export operations like export to PDF, so increasing the resolution of the default printer can mitigate the shifts.

I hope this helps,
Jeff

[Anonymous User]

Original User: alnesbit

Here is a response I got from one of our export specialist and they offer a possible solution.

Shifting on export is a longstanding problem. People tend to see it with more dramatic effect in their labels because a one pixel shift of one point relative to another can completely change how everything is labeled. The shift is usually a side effect of our reliance on windows GDI for graphics and rounding errors in the integer math we must use there. This can sometimes be mitigated by changing the default printer on the machine to be a laser printer instead of no printer or instead of the XPS document writer. Windows GDI uses the default printer during high resolution export operations like export to PDF, so increasing the resolution of the default printer can mitigate the shifts.

I hope this helps,
Jeff

Jeff,

Thank you for the information however it did not help in this case. After selecting all of my different printers, XPS document writer, and Bluebeam PDF as default printers, they all shift my labels. Interestingly, the shift that still makes all of the labels readable and not overlapping was the XPS document writer and the Bluebeam PDF. All of the laser printers caused the same shift that I attached in the first posting. So I will have to stick to my work arounds and perhaps suggest that it would be nice to fix this problem once and for all in exporting from ESRI software. Easier said than done I'm sure. 😉

[JeffBarrette]

Would it be possible for you to send me a map package for evaluation?

Please send to jbarrette@esri.com

Jeff

[Anonymous User]

Original User: jbarrette

Andrea and I worked out the problem.

It appears that with DDP enabled, the maplex labeling is affected.  If we disabled DDP and exported to PDF, we got better results.

As a work-around, we have an arcpy.mapping script that simulates DDP with setting page exents and dynamic text but DDP is not being used.

Jeff

[Anonymous User]

Original User: alnesbit

Andrea and I worked out the problem.

It appears that with DDP enabled, the maplex labeling is affected.  If we disabled DDP and exported to PDF, we got better results.

As a work-around, we have an arcpy.mapping script that simulates DDP with setting page exents and dynamic text but DDP is not being used.

Jeff

Jeff,

I sent you an email. I need to export these maps again and I never got a script that would work because I need to export selected pages, not all or the current page of my ddp mapbook. Can we log this as a bug with DDP? If you can work with me again to get a script that can export selected pages, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you,