White Background vs. Traditional Dark Background Drafting
Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 3:15 am
For the last few months I've been experimenting using a white background in Datacad to mirror the paperspace of Sketchup Layout. Since I heavily use both DCAD and SU extensively, I thought I'd try it. (The first office where I worked in DCAD used a light gray background as it's office standard back in the 90s.) Many of my construction document sets contain pages created in DCAD, SU and OpenOffice documents ...all printed to .pdf then compiled into one .pdf record document for submittals and distribution.
I thought I'd use a more paperspace approach and use light gray, dark gray and black lines with weight rather than the typical CAD rainbow of lines with assigned pen-weights. My typical office standard is to look like hand-drafting; offshoots, hatching, architectural .ttf-fonts and 4-6 line thicnesses on 11x17" inkjet originals.
So far it's a mixed bag.
- First surprise is somehow the DCAD white screen is brighter and harsher than the SU paperspace screen. Lots of eyestrain compared to my previous Prussian Blue background I've used for decades on DCAD. But if I use a slightly grayed background, then the White=Black color is disabled. But I can use dark gray instead of black...so itself a work in progress.
- And I find it hard to see or find snap-points (ñ) against the bright screen. On a dark screen even one lit pixel is discernable, but on a bright background I'm going blind. And I live for snap-points laying out my work.
- Also the snap-points get lost on a line with any weight. I have to work on that.
I just upgraded to DCAD 21 and hopefully will upgrade to SU 2019 before it's 2020 ...so the interoperability will (hopefully) be improved. Having to convert .pdfs and CAD details into .jpg or .png first to SU is a pain. And I do want to explore xref"ing SU into DCAD, and directly inserting .dwg into SU and Layout.
All a wotk-in-progress, and the final product is still lines on paper.
I thought I'd use a more paperspace approach and use light gray, dark gray and black lines with weight rather than the typical CAD rainbow of lines with assigned pen-weights. My typical office standard is to look like hand-drafting; offshoots, hatching, architectural .ttf-fonts and 4-6 line thicnesses on 11x17" inkjet originals.
So far it's a mixed bag.
- First surprise is somehow the DCAD white screen is brighter and harsher than the SU paperspace screen. Lots of eyestrain compared to my previous Prussian Blue background I've used for decades on DCAD. But if I use a slightly grayed background, then the White=Black color is disabled. But I can use dark gray instead of black...so itself a work in progress.
- And I find it hard to see or find snap-points (ñ) against the bright screen. On a dark screen even one lit pixel is discernable, but on a bright background I'm going blind. And I live for snap-points laying out my work.
- Also the snap-points get lost on a line with any weight. I have to work on that.
I just upgraded to DCAD 21 and hopefully will upgrade to SU 2019 before it's 2020 ...so the interoperability will (hopefully) be improved. Having to convert .pdfs and CAD details into .jpg or .png first to SU is a pain. And I do want to explore xref"ing SU into DCAD, and directly inserting .dwg into SU and Layout.
All a wotk-in-progress, and the final product is still lines on paper.