Mike, Looking at your pdf's a few things come to mind.

I am going to assume you exported these to pdf from Home Designer and not from Layout.
Both are on 8.5"x11" but there is a scaling difference between the two pdf's
One thing to check when exporting is the DPI. 600 or 300 will give you crisp results, anything less 
starts to compromise line and text quality. Example attached.
Your line weights are very thick in the pdf's you posted. Have a look at the advanced line weight options
under File>Print>Drawing Sheet Setup>Advanced Line Options

On my screen I don't  really see a blurriness, the lines & text are crisp. More of a line weight to scale issue. 

Cheers,

Rick
 

Restoring the Living Area Label

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/support/article/KB-00285/restoring-the-living-area-label.html

Debbie, In this attempt, In plan view, I drew a polyline representing the setbacks for the building envelope.

I selected the polyline and converted it to an architectural slab, adjusted thickness and elevation 

and assigned a transparent glass from the default concrete. I don't know of a way to have the top

surface of the envelope follow the terrain as in the example you posted.

Try using the Transform/Replicate Tool to move the light up or down on the Z axis.

I did this using Home Designer Pro 2021, I'm aware you are using Architectural 2020.
I'm not sure if this is your desired result, but the first image shows how this was done.

Auto rebuild roofs turned on.

If you have the budget, Lumion will definitely do photorealistic still images and video using the .dae export from HD2021 Pro.
Twinmotion software has available a free trial for perpetual use on non commercial projects. It is similar to Lumion as a Real-time
3D visualization tool. You'll need a stout system with a recent graphics card of at least 8GB memory for a satisfactory experience.
Try the trial version and see if you like it, the purchase of a license is very reasonable in comparison to the alternative.

Image and video output is limited to 1920x1080 with the free version. The image attached was done with Twinmotion free trial. 
Exported a .dae model from HD Pro2021 for process in Twinmotion. 

@frjram1359

Nice tip! Thanks for sharing.

Hi David, I've successfully exported dae to Lumion from within HD Pro 2021. The export to dae will be grayed out in plan view but is available in any of the orthographic or perspective views.

Kristine, I made one up, attached is a SketchUp model of similar fretwork you may find useful.
It can be resized/stretched horizontally and vertically within HD. Keep in mind if you are 
showing multiple copies adjacent to each other that have been resized (stretched or shortened)
considerably from each other then visually they are going to display distorted from one another.
YMMV

Arched_Fretwork.skp

What does the status bar report with that selection?

The Pattern doesn't influence the Texture. Patterns are displayed in rendering modes Vector and Technical. Textures are displayed in rendering modes Standard, Watercolor and Physically Based. The program will use whatever texture you set as the texture source and arrange multiple copies of it along the X & Y axis. In your example to get the 1/2 offset grid you need a suitable texture. The one shown in your example won't work. I've created one in Photoshop... attached.

The lines seem to be a product of the fillets. They are faint and don't show when printed on paper, but visible in the pdf. 

I tried a few PDF generators all with the same results.

Maybe you could compromise and adjust your filleted graphic border? Maybe something like attached? It is still creating those faint white

lines in the green grid area, but like I say, they don't print. 

Astute.pdf

Astute_Layout .layout

As Solver has mentioned regarding Patterns, The Pattern doesn't influence the Texture. Patterns are displayed in rendering modes Vector and Technical, where as Textures are displayed in rendering modes Standard, Watercolor and Physically Based. I've created and attached a jpeg texture that you may find useful in your project.

Dan, although she doesn't mention in the video, You can select that area for specification and assign it as Open to Below.