Print too light

[jjocsak]

My print jobs seem to print out very light.
I tried turning line weight on in the settings and also in the print dialog, but no change.
I tried to print all colors in black but they still print in faded colors.
Same this when printing to a PDF.

When exporting to a JPG that prints much darker

How can I get it to print darker, or is that normal?

Jeff

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Jeff,

This can be a problem if you are printing a large plan on small paper - of necessity the lines become very thin. If you have access to a larger paper size printer may solve the problem. If turning Line Weights on did not help then only other option may be to set the 2D lines to a heavier line type and make it black at the same time but that may be a big job to change them all if it is a big project. You can change the 2D lines to any type and thickess you want. You may also want to turn Solid Fill on for the walls (2D setting on wall Appearance and the master control in Settings)

You should be able to get everything print in black by changing the setting on the printer so it does not print in colour.

This has come up before so if you Search the forum on 'Light' and 'Print' you may find some other posts that may help too.

Allan

[jjocsak]

I'm surprised that the Print all colors in black" feature does not work.
The plan is not very big. It is a 2d floorplan of 3 small rooms.
When I export to a JPG it looks fine, so I may end up doing that.
The only problem with that is I can't print to scale.

Thanks
Jeff

[Doug.S]

You can print a .jpg to "scale" with a bit of trial/error ...

Include in your image a scale/ruler or object of know size/length such as a black bar at 8'  (size depends on scene size and paper print size),

then save to .jpg and print...measure the black bar...adjust save/.jpg/print until you get the black bar to size you desire...then remember all the settings and apply to the scene as you want it without the black bar.

Save your process steps so you can repeat on future projects.

This works because a .jpg is to a scale (as long as it is an orthographic view and the x-y size relationship is not changed; i.e. do not elongate one side, keep proportional).
The trick is to determine/control the scale....as there is no tool to directly do that.

[jjocsak]

Thanks Doug.

Jeff

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Jeff,

I'm surprised that the Print all colors in black" feature does not work.

"Print all colours black" works fine for me - everything is black although very pale colours eg yellow are slighly lighter but still readily visible.
 
"Print Line Weights" works fine also. With Line Weights on it is very bold (probably too bold if it is a detailed plan).

Allan

[jjocsak]

It looks as though any old plan (converted) does not allow me to show or print line weights.
Any new plan all these features work fine.

I'm getting closer....

Jeff