luckyudesign Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 Ignorant question but is the default line weight scale in chief 1/100 mm? Have you changed yours? Mine seems to work fine on a typical HP inkjet printer but the local print shop has a KIP laser printer and it prints much too light. Was hoping someone could give me a good starting point to change my scale to without sitting there for an hour sending files to them and wasting paper trying to get it just right.... Les Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 I always print to PDF, then to the print service, never had that problem. I use the 1/100mm as standard but I have all my line weights set in the layer-set that is sent to the layout. I use line-weights from 12 to 200 depending on what it is. I set up my line-weights many many years ago and haven't touched them ever since. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyudesign Posted March 18, 2017 Author Share Posted March 18, 2017 I print to PDF as well. I guess I'll take it in and play with it. Les Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 2 hours ago, luckyudesign said: Ignorant question but is the default line weight scale in chief 1/100 mm? Have you changed yours? Mine seems to work fine on a typical HP inkjet printer but the local print shop has a KIP laser printer and it prints much too light. Was hoping someone could give me a good starting point to change my scale to without sitting there for an hour sending files to them and wasting paper trying to get it just right.... Les Just a thought here but are you sure it's a line weight issue and not a color issue? If you have lines that aren't actually black it's possible you are printing in black and white and they are printing in grayscale or in color. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 Yep Michael is correct, if you print in grayscale the lighter colors will print light, so keep your colors on the darker side. You will have to experiment for yourself to see what works for you. If you print in black and white then color doesn't matter. I print in grayscale and always have, I like the different gray types. Plan looks good especially when using different line widths for window, doors wall fills, roofs, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwideziner Posted March 19, 2017 Share Posted March 19, 2017 printed line weights are affected by printer dpi, if you print at 600dpi with inkjet and they are ok. Then print at 1200dpi they will be thinner 1/2 the lineweight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyudesign Posted March 20, 2017 Author Share Posted March 20, 2017 I'll check the color issue and make sure. I'm using pretty well stock wall defaults (haven't changed anything in plan view). 1/100 was very light. changed everything (plan view, section view, and layout) to 1/10 mm so should have been 10x darker right? No different....... funny thing is, I took 2 different plans to print. One of them printed darker then the other. Far as I can tell, same settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 Do you have Line Weights toggled on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyudesign Posted March 20, 2017 Author Share Posted March 20, 2017 I don't typically have line weights toggled on when I draw. I took some pictures of the actual prints to try to show the difference. It's real strange. The layout cad lines (borders, etc) any line drawings that I sent to layout as images (title page, etc) and dimensions and text are dark like they should be. All cad lines from the plan (walls, section details, elevations, etc) are too light. I printed from the same pdf file on my office HP inkjet and they are extremely dark. I'm thinking it's something in how their printer is reading it....... Les Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted March 20, 2017 Share Posted March 20, 2017 Still looks like a color/grayscale issue to me. Try posting the plan and layout files and you'll probably get a better answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyudesign Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 Take a look. I don't think I have changed any settings other then the line weight scale and I took it back to the default (which did not work for me). I took to another shop this evening and they printed on an Inkjet fine. I do believe the KIP is a more precise printer but it showed no difference from 1/100 mm to 1/10 mm. Lance_Giesbrecht_3_1_17.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I think you need to understand the relationship between the actual line weights used in the plan and the Advanced Line Weight Options setting. You are using an ALWO of 1=1/10 along with very small line weights in the plan (about 1-4). The OOB setting for ALWO is 1=1/100mm along with line weights in the plan of anything from 1 to , say about 100. With a ALWO setting of 1=1/100mm the line weights in the plan relate to the old Rotring ink pen widths. ie, a line weight of 25 is the same as an ink pen width of .25mm, a line weight of 35 is the same as an ink pen width of .35mm, a line weight of 70 is the same as an ink pen width of .70mm, and so on. There is no right or wrong setting - whatever works for you. I happen to like Chiefs OOB settings as I have an ink drawing background and those width settings make it easy for me to relate to. I know that to most of the younger users, this is a foreign concept - what is a Rotring pen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alaskan_Son Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Looked at your settings, and I think your main problem is that your line weights are EXTREMELY small. Almost every layer in your plan has a line weight setting of 1 with a few items have a line weight of 2 and just a couple with line weights of 3 and 4. OTOH, if you look at your layout, the items that seem to be printing just fine all have line weights of between 10 and 35. Now with regard to your line weight settings. Changing them to 1 = 1/10 mm might have been enough to fix your problem but it looks like you only changed that setting in the plan. Those settings needed to be changed in layout. Your settings are still at 1 = 1/100 mm in the layout file. So...increase your line weights or change the line weight setting in layout to something higher. 1 = 1/10 mm should probably do it but you could probably even go to 1 = 1/5 mm....or even larger. Note that if you decide to adjust your line weight scale rather than the line weights themselves that you'll probably want to adjust the line weights for your layout items to more closely match the line weights you're using in the plan. If you want my opinion though, go through and change all your line weights and leave the scale at 1 = 1/100 mm. You're not giving yourself much control by using such a large line weight scale. You basically only end up with 4 or 5 possible line weight settings.... 0 = can barely see it. Probably not useful for much of anything. 1 = normal 2= medium/bold 3= extra bold 4= too big for anything except maybe a border. Don't get me wrong, that's a perfectly valid method, but go with a smaller scale if you want more variation and control. That's just my 2 cents though. Take it for what it's worth. Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwideziner Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Just re read the OP and think we have not been on the correct question entirely. The lineweight setting only controls the width of the line not the color. The color is controlled by the linetype color and whether you are using color is greyscale or all colors to print black. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 On 19/03/2017 at 2:19 AM, luckyudesign said: it prints much too light. Graeme, You could be correct. I guess we need the OP to tell us if the above means too light a shade of black, or too thin a line width (although he does talk about line weight and scale). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyudesign Posted March 22, 2017 Author Share Posted March 22, 2017 Ok, I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear. Yes, I am meaning too thin of a line. I appreciate all of your help. I had thought that this problem may have had more to do with my actual line weights but didn't want to believe it because I have never played with them. I don't know how they could have been changed from the OOB defaults. Michael, the file I attached here I had actually worked on since I tried to print Saturday. So here is how my file got to where it is now. Saturday, I emailed the file to print shop. Went to pick up and they were much to thin (light) In an effort to darken them, I stood there in the print shop and changed my scales from 1/100th mm-1/10th mm and refreshed each item in the layout to make sure they took. Tried printing again, no difference. Ran out of time......(had crawfish to boil ) Monday I opened the last PDF file that I had tried printing (the 1/10th file) and printed sections on 8x11 on my office printer. They were very heavy lines. I started playing with my layout scale, printed again. liked it better, customer was really wanting their prints, went to Office Depot and let them print them on there inkjet plotter and they turned out better. That may explain why the scale is different in the plan from the layout right now. I usually make sure they are the same. So, is there an easy way of changing all the line weights in the plan? Seems like a lot to go through and change each different wall style, cad sections, etc..... Like I said, I have no idea how they got changed in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckyudesign Posted March 22, 2017 Author Share Posted March 22, 2017 Just checking over it now. That is absolutely what the problem is......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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