X7 Poor Print Quality Using Transparent Fills In Walls


BenPalmer
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I've been playing around with using solid filled walls with a transparency of 50%.  Looks really nice, and is behaving nicely with other layers that cross over the top of them such as text, dimensions, etc.

 

However, I noticed when I print, Chief appears to be treating it like a raster image (print image function) vs a vector image (normal print function).

 

For example:  when I print a plan with walls that are solid filled with no transparency, the lines are crisp vector views as expected in the pdf when zooming in.  Once I add transparency to the walls, the entire drawing becomes pixelated raster views when zooming in.  It appears Chief is treating items that have a transparency fill as raster vs vector.  I'll attach a quick print out of a small casita plan.  I am using both Adobe Acrobat Pro, and PDF Factory Pro and getting the same results in both.  I did have to increase the down-sampling of images to ensure the quality didn't get too pixelated.

 

Another hint that this is being treated as 'print image' is that it is creating a white box border around the plan and cutting my logo off in the top right corner of the attachment.

 

Curious if others are getting this.  I can attach a plan as well, but would prefer trying your own quick plan to see if your settings get the same results or not.

 

 

Print-Sample.pdf

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Interesting study

I use just a standard light gray fill, not using transparence at all, printing in grayscale with the setting for color off is grayscale

I do something similar.    I dont use Chief's PDF output function.   I use colored walls in my drawings, but I wanted to print in 'greyscale' so the walls did not appear black.   I did not spend a lot of time, but I did not see that I could do that.

 

So....I just do it the way I always do.   I use a separate PDF "printer".  (Bullzip is what I use).   It has some nice features like "watermarks" as well for things.   But I configure my Bullzip to NOT print color.   I send the drawing to the printer from Chief with color selected.  (Chief gives a little warning that the printer does not support color).   The result is I get very nice greyscale walls, while still keeping my color in my drawings. 

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Yeah, I've done the color/greyscale print in the past, but found that the colors I was using were too light and therefore my line weights were not true to what was set.  I played around with darker colors and line weights, but I admit I was too lazy to spend the time. My pdf maker has a greyscale option as well, but I get the same problem as mentioned above with the colors I'm using.  Let me know if I'm missing something. I know some have a seperate layer set for printing, which seems like an unnecessary extra step and prone to errors in case a layer is inadvertently left off, or added on.

 

If I'm missing something on this process, please elaborate.

 

This fill option seems like a perfect solution if it will print as vector and not raster.

 

I'm not sure what is triggering the raster.  I put a cad box with 50% transparent fill on the screen to see if any transparent fill causes it, but it didn't.  Maybe I need to make the box bigger?  Or it is specific to the walls?  Not sure.  Hopefully Chief will test this more and get it fixed so we can use it.  I love the transparency fill, and understand it is a new feature and there are bound to be kinks to work out.  That is why I'm reporting this so the hopefully the final release will have this fixed.

 

PS: Nincinus, love your profile pic :)

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Hi Ben,

 

In your case I think choosing a higher DPI will provide better results. I would choose the DPI that your printer uses, probably something like 600, 1200 etc. This will take a bit longer to print and take up more memory in the PDF.

 

Let us know if you have more issues. This is a new feature so I wouldn't be surprised to find areas where things don't work quite as well as they should.

 

Thanks for your detailed feedback.

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Ben,

 

I have tried to reproduce this in a simple test plan and I have not been able too. I tested 4 different 3rd party PDF printers plus the Chief Save as PDF funtion and could not reproduce these results.  I currently do not have Adobe or PDF Factory though.

 

Could you please send this plan into support along with any steps needed to reproduce the problem?  

 

https://support.chiefarchitect.com

 

Thanks

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Let us know if you have more issues. This is a new feature so I wouldn't be surprised to find areas where things don't work quite as well as they should.Thanks for your detailed feedback.

I hope this is an invitation.

 

I had a meltdown and re-installed Win 8.1

 

I installed my printer Hp T120.

 

Not sure what is going on but it is strange.

 

The issue with Chief is:  It is slow....

 

So I will leave it at that.

 

Photoshop shows the printer driver quite quickly. Chief does not.

 

I don't know how to report this because it relates to my computer. 

 

Any comments are welcome.

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  • 3 months later...

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