Thread: Very weird garbled text issue in PDF output

I have one user who I just built a new Win10 workstation for a couple of weeks ago, and in the process I also installed our standard Acrobat X PDF printer/reader on the machine. When he prints a set of drawings to PDF, one of the fonts comes out a garbled mess of Courier New styled text. When I print the same drawing to PDF on my Win7 machine, using the exact same Acrobat X printer, it looks fine. When the page is printed straight from Revit to a printer in the office, it looks fine. The font in question is installed on his machine, as the text looks fine on-screen. Any ideas what could be causing such a weird phenomenon?

The font is called "BankGothic Lt BT", which is not installed by default on a Windows machine. I always install it whenever reformatting/reinstalling a machine's OS, or building a new machine.

The white text is supposed to read the name of our company "ARCHITECTURAL & ENERGY RESOURCES FOR CONSTRUCTION".

Just verified that both new machines in the office that I recently built exhibit the same garbled text. It's the same Revit, same Adobe Acrobat, same font. Revit Print Preview, and printing from Revit directly to paper both work fine. It's only the actual PDF output file that's messed up, and the only difference is the Win10 OS, and obviously newer hardware, but with similar specs as our other production machines.

Options for embedding font type in the PDF output? Try another PDF driver? Does it print to PDF from Word?

For whatever it is worth - I just created a new project, modified my title block to use that font, and was able to print with no issues using CutePDF, NovaPDF, and Bluebeam. I would lean towards a font embedding issue as Steve mentioned.

I checked the PDF Preferences settings for Adobe on both my Win7 machine and the other Win10 machines. All are identical.

I tried printing a Word doc with that font on the Win10 machine to Adobe, and it's garbled. Something about that font going through Adobe on these Win10 machines I guess. That sucks because our company logo uses that font.

Originally Posted by cellophane

For whatever it is worth - I just created a new project, modified my title block to use that font, and was able to print with no issues using CutePDF, NovaPDF, and Bluebeam. I would lean towards a font embedding issue as Steve mentioned.

I've had other issues with CutePDF doing weird things with text in Revit, so we're definitely not going that route.

Could the font itself be corrupted somehow?

CutePDF is not my favorite, but I had it installed and ran it as a test. If nothing else it helps eliminate some options.

I don't see how font corruption is possible, since it works fine everywhere else on-screen and printed to paper. Also the font files used are the same files I've always used, a TTF font that was first created back in 1995 according to the file properties. It's strictly when printed through Adobe PDF that it's a problem.

I wouldnt be trying a different PDF write as an actual solutrion, but more as a troubleshooting step:

If any other PDF writer handles it properly in Windows 10, you know to take it up with Adobe. If the other PDF writers handle it like trash, you know to start looking for a new font, or suitable option to use as a workaround.

Originally Posted by cellophane

CutePDF is not my favorite, but I had it installed and ran it as a test. If nothing else it helps eliminate some options.

Originally Posted by Twiceroadsfool

I wouldnt be trying a different PDF write as an actual solutrion, but more as a troubleshooting step:

If any other PDF writer handles it properly in Windows 10, you know to take it up with Adobe. If the other PDF writers handle it like trash, you know to start looking for a new font, or suitable option to use as a workaround.

Aaron said it better than I did