That’s straight from Layout Export to PDF to print. And it’s every page in an exported drawing set.
So I thought what happens if I "print PDF’ (mac) from the exported pdf and then print that.
And here’s a weird thing. When I open the ‘print pdf’ version and show the thumbnails, the thumbnails look exactly how it prints, and you can see below it’s every page in the thumbnails.
And it prints the exact version of the thumbnails. But if I view the thumbnails of the orginal exported pdf they show the full image but print like the thumbnails of this file!
If I print the screenshot of the full page it prints fine, so it’s not a printhead issue.
So maybe it’s a printer communication issue or a Mac Preview issue?
I’ve actually been on site this morning and they have printed them just fine, so it is software-hardware issue at my end.
SketchUp/Layout 26.1.257
computer: Mac Studio M2 Max 32GB
OS: Tahoe 26.5.2
Printer: HP OfficeJet Pro 9720e
any ideas?!
the file of this individual page dragged from the exported file is here if anyone to try it:
If someone in the know wants to try the Layout file I’ll dm a link, rather not post the whole thing out to the world
Can you share the LO file so we can see what happens on another machine?
Seems to me there have been issues with that. What happens if you open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader? You could share the PDF, too, so we can open it in Acrobat to see what we see.
Complex PDF files that have many superimposed layers of images, text and graphics can have this problem printing. This can often be helped by forcing the print driver to process the page in your computer instead of sending the page directly to the printer. I don’t know about the Mac, but on the PC there is usually a “print as image” or equivalent box in the print setup dialog.
Thanks Anssi, I think there’s only four or five layers in each page, and not layered viewports, just text etc on different layers.
I haven’t actually tried printing direct from layout, just from the exported pdf, I’ll try that tomorrow too as that may further point the blame at Preview.
I didn’t mean literally layers, but pages with different superimposed objects generally.
In old times I used to have this problem when trying to print any PDF from AutoCad if it had linework and text on top of a scanned image. Either my computer froze or the resulting page from the printer had elements missing.
I think this started with SketchUp 26, it never used to happen so there’s a fair chance it started with an update of either SketchUp or MacOS or both.
@DaveR did you try actually printing it from Acrobat by the way?
It’s only in the thumbnails of the ‘pdf of the pdf’ that the glitch appears in the thumbnails, the original file looks fine in the thumbnails in Preview.
Another workaround for printing complex pages is to open the PDF in a PDF editor (Acrobat, PDF Exchange etc) and use their Optimize function or export a high-res image from the offending page, and try printing that.
I’ve also just seen a very similar problem in a post from 2024 which solved the problem by making sure ‘use jpeg compression for images’ is unchecked in the Layout export options, so I will also have a look at that and see what’s what.
