Fill Patterns disappearing when I print

[Chad Smith]

I am having problems with fill patterns disappearing when I print. Mainly patterns on roofs or walls that are not perpendicular to the view.

This will happen on all printers, whether it be physical or virtual (like PDF).
And it is always the same part of the view that won't print. Even the Print Preview won't show.

It's very annoying and makes the drawing look incomplete.

[sbrown]

This is a known issue, which I have not heard a response from Revit development about yet. What it is is any hatch pattern that is "too dense" as revit defines it will no print. So you either need to change the scale of the pattern or place filled regions over the areas.

[Chad Smith]

Well that bites . I hope this one gets fixed soon.

[LRaiz]

Here is some background information. While printing and drawing Revit is taking into account pattern definition, view scale, and zoom factor. It then tries to analyze how the pattern will look when printed. Model patterns (such as those applied to surfaces) become denser in coarser views and even more dense when view is zoomed out. It order to avoid resulting increase of the amount of ink per square inch of a printed pattern Revit performs pattern over-scaling calculations. In the presence of modest zoom outs Revit would make patterns lighter (but would preserve the average amount of ink per sq inch of pattern). For even greater zoom outs (whose where 50% of pixels would be painted) Revit would replace entire pattern with a solid fill. Of cause pen width contributes to these calculations but unfortunately currently there is no direct end user control of the pattern pen.

The story is even more complicated because screen and printer are treated differently. While printing, if over-scaling calculations lead to a solid fill and user did not properly joined all pieces of geometry (chimney penetrating but not joined to roofs) then Revit would sometimes drop the entire pattern rather then paint a solid gray fill over the geometry.

To make the long story short I thought that users might need to know about workaround that could be used immediately. Internally Revit is using pen 1 for drawing patterns. In many instances when you observe dropped patterns during printing a simple workaround of making pen 1 narrower would take care of the problem.

HTH,
Leonid

[FK]

There's more: Revit knows that a pattern viewed at an angle looks denser than when it's viewed straight on. That's why you may get solid fill on a side wall and hatch on the front. Yet another build of 6.1 will have this computation much more shy.

I believe Revit always drops solid fills in raster printing, except for filled regions. You get all fills in raster mode.

[sbrown]

I am currently experiencing revit droping my solid fills on printing. My glass material has a solid grey surface pattern which shows on the screen but when printed(vector) some print some don't. I haven't tried raster yet. When will this new 6.1 be available?

We are working on a building that is all curves / ellipses and battered walls and the predictability of the actual print is impossible, every view drops hatches. I would love to send you the file for your review for future releases to be able to print the hatchs(or approximations of the hatches) consistently.

[j.butler784553]

I am having problems with fill patterns disappearing when I print. Mainly patterns on roofs or walls that are not perpendicular to the view.

This will happen on all printers, whether it be physical or virtual (like PDF).
And it is always the same part of the view that won't print. Even the Print Preview won't show.

It's very annoying and makes the drawing look incomplete.

I had this problem today, my floor element had a white material/pattern override and for some reason it took priority over the walls and their material/pattern override. I hid the floor and set my view range and I was able to fix this problem for myself.