[Tex/LaTex] Dashed line doesn’t print (TikZ)

printingtikz-pgf

I have several graphics which include dashed lines. In the PDF, everything looks exactly as it should. When I print, however, the dashed line disappears completely. What should I do to prevent this?

\begin{tikzpicture}
\node (a) at (0,1) [vertex] {};
\node (b) at (0.7,1.7) [vertex] {};
\node (c) at (1.7,1.7) [vertex] {};
\node (d) at (2.4,1) [vertex] {};
\node (e) at (1.7,0.3) [vertex] {};
\node (f) at (0.7,0.3) [vertex] {};
\draw (a) -- (b);
\draw (b) -- (c);
\draw (c) -- (d);
\draw (d) -- (e);
\draw (e) -- (f);
\draw [dashed] (f) -- (a);
\end{tikzpicture}

Best Answer

My job involves emailing a lot of PDFs to people to print out, so the "update your printer driver" solution doesn't really help me.

But what I've founded is that while dotted or dashed lines refuse to print, dotted or dashed sine waves show up fine, even if the amplitude is zero. So I put the following at the top of my document:

\usetikzlibrary{snakes}
\tikzstyle{printersafe}=[snake=snake,segment amplitude=0 pt]

Then add [printersafe] as a style to every dotted line in the code, e.g.:

\draw [densely dotted,printersafe] (0,-6) -- (10,-6);

These lines show up fine, even when printed by TAs who experience the original issue.

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