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About Archicad's documenting tools, views, model filtering, layouts, publishing, etc.

Fills not printing properly

GSButler
Participant
I am using the 25% Fill pattern for shadows in elevations, but they print as very visible dots rather than a smooth grey as shown on the screen. I have been printing from the Layout Book as well as directly from the Viewmap, same story each time.
Maitland and Butler Pty Ltd
AC18 - Windows 7 64-bit
9 REPLIES 9
Barry Kelly
Moderator
What version of Archicad are you using?

Please add info you your profile signature.

From memory the % fills used to print as dots in earlier versions - can't remember how far back though.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
GSButler
Participant
Thanks Barry

I am using AC13 on Windows XP at the moment.

I can't recall this being a problem before - have used the fill in the past many times. I thought I must have accidentally changed a setting somewhere
Maitland and Butler Pty Ltd
AC18 - Windows 7 64-bit
Barry Kelly
Moderator
13 should be good but I think you need to Publish your layouts using the built-in PDF converter.

Printing with an external printer I get mixed results - either fine or course dots instead of a nice shaded fill.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
hi, i have this problem: i created a new fill for insulation using lines which i copy-pasted. I placed the fill within a composite wall with the "fit to skin" option enabled. The fill appears correctly on screen, BUT when printing large portions of the fill are NOT printed, i.e. are left blank.
If i publish to pdf and then print, then the fill prints correctly...

any suggestions/ideas?
Mac OSX 13.6.4 | AC 26 INT 3001 FULL
Anonymous
Not applicable
Achille wrote:
hi, i have this problem: i created a new fill for insulation using lines which i copy-pasted. I placed the fill within a composite wall with the "fit to skin" option enabled. The fill appears correctly on screen, BUT when printing large portions of the fill are NOT printed, i.e. are left blank.
If i publish to pdf and then print, then the fill prints correctly...

any suggestions/ideas?
Sounds like a bug/glitch. Stick with the PDFs.
That's really bad...

the colours at the pdf do not print exactly as from archicad...
Mac OSX 13.6.4 | AC 26 INT 3001 FULL
Anonymous
Not applicable
Achille wrote:
That's really bad...

the colours at the pdf do not print exactly as from archicad...
That's strange. I haven't noticed any color variance between the printing methods. It's been a while since I've done much really fine tuned color work though. I suppose this may be due to ArchiCAD's use of RGB color space while PDF (I think) uses CMYK. What PDF program are you using? I use either Acrobat or the Mac's built in functions.
I use Adobe Acrobat.

I have noticed color variation between printing from Archicad and Pdf (mostly on solid fills) and and between printing on different plotters (HP 1050 and 800)
Mac OSX 13.6.4 | AC 26 INT 3001 FULL
Anonymous
Not applicable
Of course there is always variation between output devices. I assume the 1050 is using HPGL. That could also cause differences.

If your colors are so critical it seems you should tweak them for the particular workflow and output device. I have done this and it can be quite painstaking, but that is the world of fussy color management.