topic Re: Special Drawing Pen set / DWG translator question in Collaboration with other software

Special Drawing Pen set / DWG translator question

David Collins — Sat, 10 Oct 2020 12:40:16 GMT

I have to export a project’s permit drawings to DWGs with greyscale colors. I like to work with a color pen set, so rather than switch the whole project over to greyscale, I created a duplicate greyscale pen set and then set up the permit drawings on the layouts to use that second pen set for publication.

So far so good. Permit drawings published in PDF format use the gray scale Pen Set and look okay. But drawings published in DWG format are ignoring the gray scale Pen Set and are using the colored pens I can see in the “View Drawing’s own Pen Set” dialog in the drawing settings.

What am I missing here?

Re: Special Drawing Pen set / DWG translator question

Barry Kelly — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 01:46:45 GMT

Is the actual view that you are publishing as PDF and DWG set to use grey scale pens?
So when you right click on the PDF and DWG in the Publisher list and then choose OPEN, they open with the grey scale pen set?

If not then you need to set the view to use the correct pen set.

It is possible to have a coloured view and then tell the PDF document options to save in greyscale.
This will produce a greyscale drawing but is not using the greyscale pen set.

If when you open the DWG in the publisher list it is using the correct greyscale pen set, then it is probably a setting in the DWG translator that is being used.

Barry.

Re: Special Drawing Pen set / DWG translator question

David Collins — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 07:46:48 GMT

Hi Barry,

The project views all use the color Pen Set. When I place them as drawings in the layouts I switch their pen set to the grey scale using the Pen Set option in the Drawing Selection Settings. This works for PDF publication, but not for DWG. I call it a bug.

The solution, as you suggest, will have to be to create a duplicate set of views with the grey scale pen set and use them as the drawings in the layouts.

Alternatively, I suppose I could create a special translator that assigns greyscale Autocad colors to the Archicad colors.

I can’t decide which is worse.

Thanks
David

Re: Special Drawing Pen set / DWG translator question

Barry Kelly — Mon, 12 Oct 2020 08:30:54 GMT

I forgot about overriding the pen set of the drawing placed on the layout.
There should be no need to save greyscale views.

Make sure your DWG publisher set is actually publishing the layouts that are grey scale and not the actual views which are coloured.
I just tried saving a greyscale layout as a DWG and it was indeed greyscale using the standard "for further editing' translator.

So long as you are publishing the layouts, what you see is what you should get as far as I know.

Barry.