Text on top of a Bullet in Model Space

[joe324]

I've never had to do this before, so I'm lost as to exactly how to do it...

I run LT 2004, with a black drawing background in model space.
I'm currently laying out an audio mixer control panel, and on the finished plot, I need to have long black circles with white text (the number zero) inside of them; similar to a numbered bullet.

I first did it the most obvious way, by solid hatching the circle, and then placing the number inside of it. And while that plots just fine, I can't see the "white" number on the model screen once it's placed inside the "white" circle.

Please feel free to e-mail me if you have an answer to this, and thanks in advance.

[mjfarrell]

I'm thinking, use a filled font for the numbers
put them in the circle and then hatch the circle
with island detection on might work for you.
Or you could play games with your CTB and
have the color plot differently than it appears on screen.

[joe324]

Michael, thanks for the help. : )
I tried the island suggestion you gave, but had no luck. That's when I started trying out your plot style suggestion.

After lots of attempts, here's the way I was able to get a satisfactory B & W plot...

1. Create the bullet shape first; and use color 255 for it's lines. Then solid hatch it using the same color 255.

2. Create your MText (single line text doesn't seem to work well; at times it was causing blank areas in the hatch that showed up even after a full regen)

3. Bring the MText to the front, and make the MText color 250

4. In the Plot Styles Manager, create a plot style that does the following...

From the color list on the left (FORM VIEW), make color 250 the custom color of 255, 255, 254. I tried to just use 255, 255, 255 (pure white), but I couldn't get it to accept that color; and that color wasn't showing up in the standard color index dialog box either.
(For any color purists who might be worried about what would happen with a color plot, the custom color I created is only one "tick" from pure white, and thus, even when I did a color plot and made the numbered bullet fill an entire 18" x 24" sheet, the text appeared as white.)

5. Now scroll down to color 255 in the list, and make it black.

6. Select Save and Close to close the Plot Style Manager.

7. When you go to plot, enable plot styles, and then select the plot style from the appropriate list.

Like I said, after numerous tries, this was the closest I could get to what I wanted.
I'm sure that there's somebody out there who can think of a better way to do this,
and I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

I'm still scratching my head over 255, 255, 255 not showing up in the color dialog box while I was editing the plot style file. I couldn't even enter it manually as a custom color. Only when I selected the RGB B value of 254 (HSL L value of 99), did the plot style manager accept it as a custom color. Hmmm?????