topic Re: Fill Printing conundrum in Documentation

Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 13:40:06 GMT

Hello,

We've had this problem for quite a few versions of archicad and have never addressed it. See attached image (sorry so grainy). Some fills print out dark, some light, even though they are exactly the same fill. The areas that look white on the attachment are actually the same fill that's adjacent to them. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why this is happening. Also, we have a standard 4" horizontal fill we use for clapboards, and as you can see in the right part of the attachment, a few horizontal lines will show dark and a few will show light. This seems to happen in a pattern.

Any ideas?

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:56:30 GMT

Even if I publish as a PDF and print it from there using adobe reader, still prints messed up...

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Erich — Thu, 20 May 2010 00:23:00 GMT

Steven,

I don't get this when printing an elevation with only vectorial hatching on as you appear to be showing but if I print the same elevation with shadows turned on I get a similar effect where some areas print correctly while others are lighter (typically in a rectangular patches). Do you have shadows on but turned very light?

For me, the elevations (or pdf's if I print to a file) look fine on screen. Only the printed output looks wrong. It also appears to be printer independent as I have this same effect with any printer I have tried to date.

I would love to know if anyone has a solution.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:22:32 GMT

Shadows are not on. The elevation is also a line drawing with fills, no 3D at all.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Erwin Edel — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:41:04 GMT

What kind of pen weight are we talking about?

Personally I never go below 0,09 mm for my pens and they print just fine.

Could you perhaps save the fill as .aat file through the attribute manager and attach it?

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:51:18 GMT

The fills are the lightest possible (0 mm), they normally come out fine, but some of the time they print out different shades. This happens to me with a lot of the standard archicad fills, no need to attach a fill file you already have.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Erwin Edel — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:57:35 GMT

I use a different release of ArchiCAD, not sure if it's got the same fills. I did have problems with 0 mm lines and just put them at 0.09 mm (the pens I use for linework). Maybe even something like 0.01 mm would fix it.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:24:14 GMT

Put the pen weight up a bit, nothing changed.

BTW, when you place a drawing on a layout, do you have it as color? When we place a drawing on a sheet, we change the pen set to a plotting pen set, which is all black but keeps the same lineweights. Is this necessary?

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:28:24 GMT

Could it be a printer specific issue?

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Erwin Edel — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:40:24 GMT

Yeah, I have working and plotting pen sets. The first being coloured, the latter has black pens (the ones we want to be black, of course). I also have a greyed pen set I sometimes use.

If you want to have coloured pens in your work views, you need multiple pen sets with corresponding pen weights.

I define my pen sets for the drawing I placed (black set) and have the colours put on 'Defined by Pen Set'.

Possible workaround could be to rasterize your PDF at 150 or more dpi. (maybe even 600? Higher than that would be pointless for most printing devices) I think you need Acrobat Pro to do that, couldn't find it in my normal version.

If you suspect the printer (I would), I'd consult the manufacturer's helpdesk and have 'em send someone over.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

archigreen — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:05:32 GMT

Hi There
I used to have the same problem with my fills until I found out the solution not to mix SOLID FILLS with VECTORIAL FILLS or SYMBOL FILLS
For example: if you want a fill of 75% make a new vectorial fill more compact or if you want 5% make a vectorial fill less compact.
That's the only way to cope with this issue.
Good luck!

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 05:43:32 GMT

It may not be of any help, but I have found setting my pdf option to 300dpi is a perfect resolution (yet emails quickly) coupled with making sure I DON'T set the pdf option to grayscale or color, (ie) use Black and White
But I'm sending to my "blue" print house, so obviously your settings may differ.
lec

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:24:59 GMT

archigreen wrote:
Hi There
I used to have the same problem with my fills until I found out the solution not to mix SOLID FILLS with VECTORIAL FILLS or SYMBOL FILLS
For example: if you want a fill of 75% make a new vectorial fill more compact or if you want 5% make a vectorial fill less compact.
That's the only way to cope with this issue.
Good luck!

Don't quite understand what you mean... Also, the fill in question is actually a symbol fill. Does this make a difference?

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

rgarand — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:09:02 GMT

Interesting thread...we have the same problem. I would like more detail regarding the solid/symbol/vectorial fills. I to do not understand what you are saying. Please elaborate.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:22:36 GMT

Robert, what brand printer do you use? Someone here in the office thinks it's our printer and how it's interpreting the file. We're using a Canon Color Image runner.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

rgarand — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:32:38 GMT

A KIP 3100. I find it hard to believe that our $10,000 printer/copier/scanner, which is used by our local print shops would have trouble with fills...but I am just a project manager and know nothing about printers.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Erika Epstein — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:00:48 GMT

Steve & Robert,
Have you tested what happens when you send it to a plot bureau or some other printer?
I had similar trouble with in-house prints a while ago. Increasing the printer's memory resolved the problem.

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:10:41 GMT

When we send it to the plotter here in our office it prints fine. Increasing the printer memory? It has 67,000 MB. Is this enough?

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

Anonymous — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:14:26 GMT

Our printer is also quite expensive and it's annoying that it can't print our da mn drawings accurately...

Re: Fill Printing conundrum

rgarand — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:21:02 GMT

One of my colleagues just mentioned to me that he has this problem only when he prints from ArchiCAD. Solution being, print to PDF, open and print from Acrobat. All the fills print fine from Acrobat!

We are all on Macs here, using Acrobat 8 Pro.