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I'm trying to have floor plan print lighter than the information on the plan (a background plan). I have set a pen (#4) in this case to print at 60%. It works ok when I print with the colored lines on.
But when I check "all black" I get a black an white pdf but the plan I wanted to print lighter is just black.

How can I solve the problem if anyone understands what I am saying?

When you click all black you get all black 100%. You can get what you want by unclicking all black and mapping all colours individually to black with percentage variations as you require.

all black does mean all black, ignoring colors and density.
You might have to create a 2nd Pen Table that has the lines not colored.

Thanks Nick.

Thanks Roger.

Thanks. It doesn't work.

When I leave the pen designated light gray to print at 50%, in order for that to happen, I have to print the drawing in color. I don't want to pay for a color print just for a small background plan.

Maybe that's what I'll have to do.

Oh well.

This works pretty well on my Brother laser printer.

You could map colors red thru cyan all to Pen 2 since they have the same settings which would free up pens 3-5 to be used for something else in the future.

Great .... Thanks Josh.

The other option would be to use a VERY thin pen setting - but be careful that whoever is printing the sheet for you doesn't use too low of a DPI setting. When I plot a sheet this way on my Canon inkjet plotter I get a really crisp sheet; when I send it out to my local repro company they have a laser that defaults to 300 DPI and I lose most of the thin line work. Josh recommended that I request that they use a higher DPI (600?) to force it to show everything correctly - I haven't yet but the next order will have that request!

Thanks for the info MtnArch

Hi Roger,

rogerra wrote:Thanks. It doesn't work.

When I leave the pen designated light gray to print at 50%, in order for that to happen, I have to print the drawing in color. I don't want to pay for a color print just for a small background plan.

Maybe that's what I'll have to do.

Oh well.

You do not have to print any color if you don't want to. Map all the pens to grays (percentage density of black!) and black, like shown above, and there you go!

Thanks to all who responded. I have not had a chance to do any of the suggestions yet.

I'll let you know how they work when I do.

If the base drawings is fairly straight-forwards, the other method I've seen is change the line-type of the screen-base to "dotted" and experiment a bit with lineweights and spacings to get a "screened" appearance.

Never have found a decent used for "dotted" lines anyway. In most architectural practices I've even worked-in over the last 30-years, conversationally that's what we called "dashed" lines . I still think "dotted" when in CAD I mean "dashed".

rogerra wrote:Thanks. It doesn't work.

When I leave the pen designated light gray to print at 50%, in order for that to happen, I have to print the drawing in color. I don't want to pay for a color print just for a small background plan.

Maybe that's what I'll have to do.

Yes it does, and no it isn't. Every colour you are using is black - in varying quantities. Indeed, the ability to print grey on a black-only printer is a reason for NOT getting a colour printer. In the pentable below, white and dark grey are used for light-grey and lighter grey lines and fills