PDF quality in layout is displaying in poor quality

LayOut
1

When I insert a .pdf spec file into pages on my plans, they initially display in good quality, but eventually, start to display poorly. For reference, these .pdf files are being served from Dropbox (as is the Layout file itself). Does anyone have an idea why these eventually display poorly after initially looking fine? Please see the same page showing the inserted .pdf in both low quality and high quality for reference. Thank you!

specs-low-quality.pdf (208.6 KB)

specs-high-quality.pdf (733.1 KB)

2

That’s scary.

What happens if you download the LO and PDF files to the internal drive and work on them from there.

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3

I have just copied the files over to my desktop and updated the reference so I will see if the issue occurs again under this scenario. I realize many on here don’t like Dropbox and it tends to be the issue, but at the moment, this is what our company uses for all project data collaboration. Do you know if I can embed these files and if so, could that potentially be a workaround?

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4

I hope you keep backups!

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5

When you insert a file into LayOut there will be an embedded copy. If you select the reference in Document Setup>References and click Unlink, LayOut will no longer look at the original reference file. Whether or not that helps I can’t say.

BTW, it’s not that we dislike DropBox, it’s that there’s plenty of examples of fatally corrupted files stemming from working on them when they are saved to the cloud or to another drive external to the computer. If your company is fine with that risk, don’t change anything. A safer workflow would be to put the LO file and any associated reference files in a common folder. When you want to work on the project, download the entire folder to your computer. When you are finished and everything has been saved in the folder, copy the folder back to DropBox.

Are you still using SketchUp 2023?

6

We do.

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7

That makes sense and I have done that to test it out. I’m using SketchUp 2026.

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8

Hopefully you’ll find it works better.

Please update your forum profile. It’s a few years out of date.

9

What are your Display and Output quality settings set to in Document Setup>Paper? If set to Medium or Low LayOut probably won’t display the image of the PDF to full resolution. Importing a PDF converts it to a raster image but I don’t know to what resolution. Switching Display Quality to High makes LayOut run slower so the best option is perhaps keeping it at Medium or Low and setting the Output quality to High (this creates larger output files, though).

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10

What do they look like exported?

11

Thanks and done.

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12

All set to high under Document Setup>Rendering.

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13

During the issue, they were visibly difficult to understand on screen and when printed out. What @DaveR suggested looks to be working so far.