Arrowheads plot very faint

[Anonymous]

I've never been able to get the arrowheads on lines to plot very well, they have always plotted out very faint grey, even when I plot to black and white. It does not matter how heavy the line weight is, what color, or what size the arrowhead is, it always plots a faint grey. Everything else prints perfectly but the arrowheads.

What am I missing here? It is probably some silly preference or something I just cannot find.....

[Anonymous]

I have the same problem when printing solid fills. They print a faint grey, they also export to dwg as just a blank fill, just the outlines.

Any ideas?

[Thomas Holm]

ALL solid fills?
Regardless of pen/color?
How does it display before printing?
Model View Options?
True line weight or Hairline?
What print procedure and printer do you use?
Settings in Print dialog?
What if you print to PDF?
What if you Publish to PDF?
How do the PDFs display?
How do they print?

[Anonymous]

So Thomas, are you saying I need to provide more info??

The arrowheads are the most perplexing, so let's stick to that one as fills print fine, they just don't export to dwg so well. As far as I know, the arrowheads export fine, maybe on the wrong end of the line, but they still export.

So, the arrowheads. I am plotting to an HP1055CM DesignJet plotter, with the ArchiCad drivers/plotmaker, it you can call it that anymore, with the publisher. My plot settings are Black and White, NOT Hairline, connected through TCP/IP ethernet.

On screen display is fine, my view options are true weight. Export or publish to PDF looks perfect at 1200 dpi, also publish to any other format. It is only when plotting. My line weight for the lines is .57 all the way up to 2.5, it doesn't matter the line thickness/arrowhead size, it will still plot faint grey even though the line will plot nice and dark, crisp heavy black.

I just can't imagine why arrowheads would plot with any different properties than the lines they are associated with. My line default settings are set to Drafting line, simple 2D drawing line. Everything plots exactly perfect except for arrowheads. It seems as if the arrowheads are being treated as a 50% fill or something.

Thanks for the response!

[Thomas Holm]

Steve,
you didn't tell us how your PDFs print?

Whatever, I'd try:

- Use Print instead of Plot. Plot is obsolete, and support is vaning. Print will use the system drivers, should work fine.

- Try a slightly darker color for the arrowhead, at some point it should switch to black. If it doesn't, probably a bug in the Plot driver.

[Anonymous]

Oh sorry Thomas, PDF prints just fine. I will definately try Print instead of Plot as I see Print has many more options. More is better, right? Ha, I'll give it a go and let you know what I find.

Thanks for the advice.

[Anonymous]

A REVELATION! I had to send some PDF files this morning, and noticed that my arrowheads are grey on my PDF files too. This I hadn't realized!!

My PDF files are set to Black and White, 1200 DPI.

Thomas, does that help shed some light on my issue??? There HAS to be some silly little setting I haven't been able to find!!!

[Richard Morrison]

Steve,
One thing that you haven't mentioned, is whether you are printing from a layout, or directly from the plan. If from a layout, there will be a pen set that needs to be adjusted to be correct.

Also, even if your plotter is set to print in B&W, ArchiCAD needs to be set to print in B&W also. If you are printing greyscale, then the pen sets in layout become more critical.

The other thing that strikes me is that your lineweights seem like they would be very "blobby." You might try a thinner lineweight for the arrow.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Richard, I print from layouts, I haven't thought about the pens for the layouts, I assumed that since "plotmaker" is now a part of ArchiCad that the model pens would be the same pens for the layouts.

I think you are on the right track, I'll look into it now. The pen I posted was a heavy line, I usually use something much thinner for arrows.

Thanks for the help!