Black & white PDF bug in V12

[Barry Kelly]

Can anyone else please confirm thisas being a problem (bug)?
I want to publish all my PDF as balck & white or grey scale.

When publishing a PDF with the built in converter, set the document options to print the PDF in "Black & White".
Print a layout where the drawing is displayed in colour.
The drawing must contain walls with a solid fill that is not black (this only seems to be a problem with fills).

All the coloured fills appear white (empty).

However set the print options to colour or grey scale and it prints as expected.

See attached image for an example.
The left is a coloured layout printed as black and white.
The centre is the same layout printed as colour (and as it appears in Archicad).
And the right printed as grey scale.

The simple solution is to have a pen set for black / white / greyscale pens that can be used to display the drawings in the layouts as I want them to print.
Then print these with the document settings as "Colour".
Then they will all print black / white / grey as displayed.

It's not a big problem to over come but I just to confirm that it is a problem and not something I am doing wrong.

By the way there is no such problem in V11.

Barry.

[Anonymous]

is it something about adobe reader? upgrade the version

[Barry Kelly]

angus wrote:
is it something about adobe reader? upgrade the version

I don't think so.
Currently using Acrobat Reader 8.1.3.
And it isn't a problem in version 11.
Barry.

[Thomas Holm]

Previously, there has been complaints that colors are converted to black too early - (the threshold being too light) - have you tested with dark colors to see where the threshold is now, if they've just moved it, or if really ALL fill colors print white?

(As I see it, the use for this option is most often to get readtable b/w output for large-format plotters/printers where color is still expensive, especially when you print volumes. I usually turn off fills in thsi situation, but they might have anticipated that.)

[Barry Kelly]

Thomas wrote:
Previously, there has been complaints that colors are converted to black too early - (the threshold being too light) - have you tested with dark colors to see where the threshold is now, if they've just moved it, or if really ALL fill colors print white?

(As I see it, the use for this option is most often to get readtable b/w output for large-format plotters/printers where color is still expensive, especially when you print volumes. I usually turn off fills in thsi situation, but they might have anticipated that.)

Even a fairly dark grey becomes white (or no fill).
I don't know what the exact threshold is but from what I have seen so far only black fills remain black.

I just experimented and it is only black (RGB 0,0,0) that remains black.
An almost black colour (RGB 31,31,31) prints as white (or empty).

As I mentioned before it's not really much of a problem as I display all my drawings on the layouts with an alternate black/grey pen set and print the PDF as colour - completely avoiding the problem.
However, surely we should also be able to display the drawings in colour in the layouts and print the PDF as black & white - otherwise why would there be that option?

Barry.

[Thomas Holm]

Barry wrote:
...Even a fairly dark grey becomes white (or no fill).
I don't know what the exact threshold is but from what I have seen so far only black fills remain black.

I just experimented and it is only black (RGB 0,0,0) that remains black.
An almost black colour (RGB 31,31,31) prints as white (or empty).....

OK looks like a bug then. Please report through your reseller!

[Anonymous]

Barry wrote:
As I mentioned before it's not really much of a problem as I display all my drawings on the layouts with an alternate black/grey pen set and print the PDF as colour - completely avoiding the problem.

Printing colors as B/W or grays is often troublesome in various programs on various printers (though more so now in AC12 it seems) and probably always will be. This is why your practice of assigning pen sets to control the output is the way to go. Not only is it more predictable, it provides vastly more control of the output quality. This is why I have recommended this approach as an exclusive practice for almost 20 years.

[Barry Kelly]

Thomas wrote:
OK looks like a bug then. Please report through your reseller!

GS now have a test file to play with.
Barry.

[Barbara Sommer]

Barry wrote:

Thomas wrote:

OK looks like a bug then. Please report through your reseller!

GS now have a test file to play with.
Barry.

Thanks Barry for the test file. We have registered the problem as a bug.
A short explanation of why this is happening:
When creating pdf's or other print files in black and white mode ArchiCAD first of all checks the density of each fill. If the density is high the fill, wall, etc., will be displayed as solid black. If the density is low, the fill will be displayed as a solid white.
Unfortunately the density check did not give a correct result in the case discussed here. The reason for that is, that the composite wall shown in the example uses an extremely dense vectorial fill which ArchiCAD does not handle well. So instead of displaying the foreground color it chose the background color.

In general we advise not to use extremely dense vectorial fills.
So either decrease the fills density or even better:
If you wish to display certain wall-layers as solids it is advisable to use percentage or solid fills instead. This will not only decrease the pdf's file size but also influence the speed of 2D rebuilt and of course saving as pdf will be much faster as well.

If you are interested how the fill choice is influencing a pdf's file size you can read more about this topic on ArchiCAD Wiki:
http://www.archicadwiki.com/PDF%20file%20size%20and%20Fill%20choice

[Barry Kelly]

Thankyou Barbara for looking into this problem.

I will look at the type of fills we use for our walls.
Currently they are a diagonal line fill with a very small spacing rather than a solid or percentage fill.
There was a reason we did this but that was some 8 or 9 years ago now so I will have to re-look into it.

Thanks again.
Barry.