Plotting Screened Lines

[srsherrill]

Our office is plotting to a DesignJet 500C from Land Desktop 2004 & 2005. We have no need for color output and use a variety of screen densities and widths for existing utilities, topography and other objects in both model space and paper space. Our problem is that areas where a screened object intersects with a full density line, the screening dominates causing some things, especially text, to become unreadable. Release 13 had the hpconfig
command that allowed adjustment for this, but we can find neither driver nor AutoCAD setting to easily fix this. Is there some setting that we have overlooked that will force any screened entity into the background short of using the displayorder utility for each one? I would take the whole thing back down to r13 for plotting, but our plotter refuses to speak hpgl 2.
Thanks,
Steve (the dinosaur) Sherrill

[mjfarrell]

Go to your Plot Device tab while plotting or during Page Set-up
Hit Properties for the plot device, second from the top you should
see Graphics, expand that topic and you will find the Merge control option
that will do what you seek.

[srsherrill]

Thanks, I shall try that straight away tomorrow morning. Perhaps if these forums had been around when 2000 came out and we couldn't get it to plot ANYTHING we would not have been still using r13 and EaglePoint up through last December. It has been a rough conversion, but it seems the new 2005 release has fixed most of the problems we were having.
the dinosaur

[srsherrill]

Thank you for your suggestion. I tried changing this setting, but the sreening is still dominant over the solid linework. This is mostly a problem on plan & profile sheets using x-ref's. Plotting paper space first works for the profile grid, but the screened features in the x-ref plan area plot over the solid lines regardless of the settings.
The Dinosaur

[RobertB]

Regardless of the Merge option, does changing the draw order have any affect? Place the screened lines "below" the solid lines in the draw order. Otherwise, it might just be the plotter. (I presume you have updated the drivers.)

[srsherrill]

Thank you for your response,
The latest drivers I have found for the plotter were from December when we installed it. I was going to search for a new one next. Changing the draw order does work in some cases, but it is a last choice option for us. We are still in the process of converting the office to LDD and we have several projects still in the final design phases using old release 13, which has no comparable command that I have found, with EaglePoint design software (yes I AM a dinosaur). They were too far along to justify trying to convert them to a completely different design software that none of us are quite efficient with yet. Unfortunately, the major reason behind changing software was the death of our old plotter and the inability of the new one to work with 13's HPGL 2 language (actually I have managed to get it to plot as a system printer everything we need except the screened linework). These projects should go away over the next several months, but for now to get a plot we have to load those drawings into 2005 and quit when finished. We still have the problem in our new 2005 projects as well, particularly on sheets with an x-ref plan and a screened profile grid. where no matter the settings if the xref plots correctly, the profile grid does not and if we get the profile correct the plan area becomes affected. The drafters on these projects claim to have changed the draw order and still get these results.

The Dinosaur

[dgordon.68443]

how many xrefs are you using in the drawing. I've found that 2002 2004 versions of autocad have a hard time with draw order on drawing that have xrefs 2 deep. What I mean by two deep is a drawing with and xref already attached to it is attached to a new drawing whereas both drawings are now linked to the final drawing but one is directly and one indirectly.

Draw order has to be corrected on the base drawing and then in the first drawing it was xref'd to.

I suggest if this is the case you may want to look at how your xrefing the drawings and try to reorganize them so that all the drawings that you need to xref all come to the drawing directly.

Hope this helps,
Dan Gordon

[srsherrill]

Thank you for the suggestion. We also try to keep the xrefs only one deep and usually only one total - typically an overall base sheet of a development with 5 -10 phases with their own sets of layers (all screened except the current phase). The problem with changing the draw order is that some linework in the future and even earlier phases keeps changing and moves to the top of the stack. With 4 or 5 people working on the base sheet there is always new linework on a layer that is screened on a some sheets and solid on others. This is usually not discovered until after at least one plot has been wasted and several more are in the que - quite frustrating when one has to plot a 25 sheet set and print 7 sets of bluelines by 3:00 or miss a submittal cutoff.
The Dinosaur

[Mike.Perry]

The problem with changing the draw order is that some linework in the future and even earlier phases keeps changing and moves to the top of the stack.
Hi

Check out the following Submissions # EX001009 & EX001082 on the AUGI Exchange Page to help you with your DrawOrder issue/problem -

AUGI Exchange Search Page (http://64.227.78.21/empower/exchange/searchdownloads.asp)

Have a good one, Mike

[srsherrill]

It appears that our plotter driver was the cause. We reinstalled the driver and the plot merge option seems to work now.
Thanks all for the suggestions and help
The Dinosaur

[sthedens]

When using the Merge option on non-color plots, are screen percentages cumulative? For example, if I have a solid fill of a contaminated area using 25% screen, and I have existing contour lines at 50%, will the contour lines darken to 75% where they pass over the contaminated area?

steve

[Mike.Perry]

When using the Merge option on non-color plots, are screen percentages cumulative? For example, if I have a solid fill of a contaminated area using 25% screen, and I have existing contour lines at 50%, will the contour lines darken to 75% where they pass over the contaminated area?Hi

I believe yes, as the output device will put down ink for both Objects when Lines Merge is enabled ( is my understanding )... though I recommend you try it and see ie

Experiment, see what results you get.

Have a good one, Mike