Topic Title

Is their a method of changing the line-weight of a nested XREF?

Robert

The way I can think of is to use Highlighting, and keep that independent of the parent XRef.

The way I can think of is to use Highlighting, and keep that independent of the parent XRef.

Yes, I'm using highlighting to change the line from solid to dashed and the color from white to light grey which is my "screened" color. Not seeing an option to change line-weight from 2 to 1.

have you tried to make the whole xref a line weight of 1?

have you tried to make the whole xref a line weight of 1?

I did try that...doesn't do anything. My XREF is just of single layer...my wall layer. I "could" just copy that layer and make changes as a work around.

might add a wish list item to have that ability in the xref manager.

I concur with that getting added as a wishlist item. Dave has nothing better to do so he should be able to get right on this.

Lots of times, I make a self Xref of the floor plan to use as a lighter background drawing for my electrical plans, plumbing plans, and HVAC plans. Makes those plans read for what they should be showing but the plan elements are still very visible. I use lineweights on my actual drawing to pop out walls, doors, etc., rather than doing that by color and pen numbers during the plotting stage. Probably a throw-back to my manual drafting days. When I make the self xRef, I can change its color to the pen color that I have set to print at a 35% level and that makes the shaded background plan. But, the lines that I have made bolder on the drawing remain as bolder, shaded lines and are more distracting to the base drawing than I would prefer. Having an option to turn the xRef into one particular line weight would be a great addition.

My use is very much the same as David Porter. Good to see another user holding onto line-weights I work with line-weight turned on most of the time as we don't have the speed hit we experienced in the early years. Might be a throw back to my early days on the board with pen and mylar.
I'm also using a lighter background (80% grey) for my framing and electrical plans as a base.

Taking this off topic...here's my pen table that has worked well with slight modifications over the last 15 years and a screen shot of a drawing in process.
Anyone else up for sharing their pen tables and a sample...might be a good diversion from the frozen tundra here in Michigan

Bob

Sure, I'm game. Actually, since all of us using DataCAD are probably visual thinkers due to the program we use, I think it's a good idea for lots of group sharing of how we each use the program to our personal style. Below is an electrical plan I just completed. All of the background plan lines were color 126 which then prints to the shaded linetype noted in my Pen Table.

Well said David! A picture is certainly worth a 1000 words!

Here's a clip from one of my works in progress using a XREF, dashed background mapped to a 80% grey (pen 10) on my pen table above.
I can live with not being able to control the line weight but there must be something I'm doing or not doing that is allowing the xref to print above my black lines? Pushing it back would certainly help the situation....taking my Photoshop hat off now

I would try 2 things.
1. Make the xref layer earlier in your layer list before all your notes.
2. Make the shaded pens all earlier in your pen list.

From the Manual - "The print order depends on pen numbering."

A couple notes:
I see you are using Pen 15 as a 0,0 setting, you can now use Pen 0 for non plotting.
I see you have many colors above the 1st 16 set to pen 2, if you want to print a fill area in a color, say color 45 (red tone) if that color is set to Pen = 16, it will print the screen color.

Tried putting the xref on its own layer first in line using layer manager....same issue.
I suspect it is a pen order issue which I don't see me changing..about 150 plans set up that way
I could use a reverse pen order plotting option

I would try 2 things.
1. Make the xref layer earlier in your layer list before all your notes.
2. Make the shaded pens all earlier in your pen list.

From the Manual - "The print order depends on pen numbering."

A couple notes:
I see you are using Pen 15 as a 0,0 setting, you can now use Pen 0 for non plotting.
I see you have many colors above the 1st 16 set to pen 2, if you want to print a fill area in a color, say color 45 (red tone) if that color is set to Pen = 16, it will print the screen color.

Tried putting the xref on its own layer first in line using layer manager....same issue.
I suspect it is a pen order issue which I don't see me changing..about 150 plans set up that way
I could use a reverse pen order plotting option

I hear you on having many plans (let's see 20 years now, 20-30 projects per year, many projects having multiple drawings) quick search of .aec files, over 3,000, plus .dc5 and .dc3 that I haven't counted.

You could check on this one drawing the pen order to see if that did solve your problem, and if so, maybe for these drawings you could use a 2nd pen table for Mech/Elec dwgs????

That did the trick and I think my new revised pen table will work well with the archived files.
Pen 15 can be switched to a printing pen now since we have "0" as a non printing slot.

Thanks Roger!