forum.datacad.com

Having the ability to assign more pens and map more colors, including options to vary the percent density of the colors would be a big improvement.

The above screenshot shows the 1-255 pen assignments on the left table with only 0-15 pen options that allow percent density on the right table. The first 8 pens are generally automatically assigned to the standard black linework leaving only pens 9-15 the option to assign a pen color with varying percent density. Using 100% color is often too strong and the drawing requires a lighter, more transparent color. Having only 7 remaining pen numbers that can allow percent density options more often than not is too restrictive and the drawing needs more colors.
Wishlist - amend the right side Pen Settings table to include all 1-255 pen numbers allowing the option to map to a color and modify the percent density . The two tables could be combined to simplify the information?

Yes please! I think Autocrud supports up to 32 pens which would be a big improvement and probably easiest to implement for DWG comparability but would love to see 0-255 pens if it was possible!

Edit: Looks like Autolad supports upto 255 virtual pens so yeah

I'm not sure how complex this is to add extra pens but even an additional 10-12 would be welcomed....

If one sets say color 45 to pen 16, then the line will print in (or close to) the screen color of 45.
Don't know if that helps.

Roger D wrote:If one sets say color 45 to pen 16, then the line will print in (or close to) the screen color of 45. Don't know if that helps.

That does helps with getting more colors to output, but doesn't help with ordering and you can't set pen widths which have been where I hit my head.

Thanks Guys
....do you have another 10-11 pen tips like this?
My real query in the original post was increasing the number of pens that also allow percent density to be applied so the color fill is not as heavy when printed. Looking at the Pen Table menu, the only way to do this is by increasing the number of pens that can assign a color?
....Let's see what DataCAD 20 has to offer

Mark Bell wrote:allow percent density to be applied so the color fill is not as heavy when printed.

If it's just for fills and nothing drawn using Pens 1-15 needs to go on top of the fills, Roger's tip of using pen 16 and then adding colors to your color palette so your on screen colors will mimic what you want on paper like a series of light grey colors that would work. Could even use a black color mapped to Pen 16 and then use ordering to move things in front of or in back of to order the Pen 16 output (I think that should work?) You would need to try test prints to check the color output, ordering and the hardset Pen 16 width to make sure everything outputs as expected.

Thanks Josh, Roger,
I'll give this a go and see whether it's able to mimic percent density currently applied to pens 9-15.
Cheers

Hi Mark,

Mark Bell wrote:Having the ability to assign more pens and map more colors, including options to vary the percent density of the colors would be a big improvement.

ambpentable1.jpg

The above screenshot shows the 1-255 pen assignments on the left table with only 0-15 pen options that allow percent density on the right table. The first 8 pens are generally automatically assigned to the standard black linework leaving only pens 9-15 the option to assign a pen color with varying percent density. Using 100% color is often too strong and the drawing requires a lighter, more transparent color. Having only 7 remaining pen numbers that can allow percent density options more often than not is too restrictive and the drawing needs more colors.
Wishlist - amend the right side Pen Settings table to include all 1-255 pen numbers allowing the option to map to a color and modify the percent density . The two tables could be combined to simplify the information?

A side note - your color pens are higher numbers than you 100% black pens, so when / if these cross over each other in a drawing, the black will be obscured by the color. To have them merge the other way around, the lightest color (including grays) need to be Pen 1, then Pen 2, and so on. The 100% black pens need to start at the higher numbers above the darkest colors.

Hello Neil,
We have the print order set using the Layer Order = Last with all color fills positioned at the top of the layer menu so they print first with other line types printed afterwards which allows them to print over the fills.
I've resolved finding some additional pen numbers that can be assigned with Percent Density by reassigning 4 lesser used pen colors that were previously set to black, and mapping them to 4 new colours with a percent density applied. This gives us 10 colors with percent density available and allows us to add more colour options in legends etc. for master plans, landscape plans etc. with submissions.
I'm sure we're not the only office that prefers to use semi-transparent fills which is achieved using the percent density option compared to solid fills? Hopefully DataCAD can expand on this with a future release.

The Merge function that I am talking about is only controlled by the Pen table, and the numerical order of the pens.

Hi Neil,
OK got it. I wasn't aware of this feature as we've always used the Layer Order option to sort how entities print. The pen numbers/line weights in our pen table have derived from when DataCAD printed to the old pen plotters with carousels. I'll have a look at an alternative based on what you've noted and see if we can notice any difference.
Thanks.

Just sitting here staring at the screen trying to think of a work around to make some knockouts work in some new symbols, but think the only solution would be more pens

If you can settle on using screen colors, verses mapping to color, you could use could use pens 10 to 15 for various pen weights and density. You also are using several pens for the black and the same weight. If you eliminated the duplicates it opens up some pen tables. Attached is the pen table we use in our office.

Hi Arthur,

We're able to print more than 15 colours at any one time but the issue is the limited number of pens that can support Percent Density so the colours do not print as 100% solid colours. I had a project last year where the drawing set required about 20 colours and mixing some with PD and others solid didn't look good so we opted to do them all at 100%. The client didn't like them and asked for B&W instead because the printed colours were too dominant~! I'm not sure how other offices work, but we also use DataCAD for presentation work rather than add colours/fills etc. in desktop publishing software and quite often, we need more colours with a PD applied, than there are pens available. This is the main reason to have this wishlist item added to the 'to do list'. We're doing a competition submission now and we know the two other firms invited are using Revit and Archicad and those packages appear to allow transparent fills to more than 15 colours.