AC10 plotting fill bug?

[Scott Bulmer]

I guess this is where these items are being reported.

When either of the two 25% fills are set with the background pen as transparent (0), the fill plots as solid black. All other fills that we have tested are fine with the transparent background pen. Also, the 25% fills plot fine with other background pens set. Our plotter is an HP700 monochrome.

I don't recall if this was the case in AC9.

[Anonymous]

Burginger wrote:
Where can you control the SCREEN PERCENTAGE? I see the 25% grey, 50% Grey . . . All I can get is a very fine dot pattern- Looks like 150 lpi . Where can I control this output in the publisher?

AFAIK it is not editable. These fills are now simple grey tones that print according to the resolution (and probably the RIP) of the printer. They are not halftone screens.

If you really need to control the halftoning you can use the old form of the 25% fill (or any equivalent vector dot fill) and set the pen weight and spacing accordingly. This could take a bit of fussy fine tuning. For 60lpi a spacing of 1/60" and pen size of 1/120" (0.6pt or 0.2mm) are probably close enough, but may be a little light if the dots are truly round.

[Stephen Dolbee]

I noticed right after we got AC10 that 25% fill (which we use for shadows) printed as bitmap on our hp500. However, it prints vectorial (which we want) on my Canon Multipass. Is there a printer/plotter setting that needs to be adjusted?

Steve

[Anonymous]

Stephen wrote:
I noticed right after we got AC10 that 25% fill (which we use for shadows) printed as bitmap on our hp500. However, it prints vectorial (which we want) on my Canon Multipass. Is there a printer/plotter setting that needs to be adjusted?

Steve

This is very strange. I didn't know that a fill could even do that (print two different ways). Is the HP using Postscript or HPGL? The part about the Canon printing vector seems especially strange. I have a Canon MP780 (which probably uses similar drivers to your Multipass). I'll try a test to see if I get he same.

[Stephen Dolbee]

My mistake. I just tried it again and it prints bitmap on the Canon. I guess the smaller scale made me think it was vectorial.

In v9, there was the Display/Output option to set fills:
1. keep original
2. all to empty
3. all to solid
4. all to bitmap
5. all to vectorial

This worked and we got the desired results with v9. I would never want to go back, but I do hope this is corrected in v10.

[Anonymous]

Tacking on my question here, since it seems relevant.

Problem was solved by the end of typing this message, but I am still confused as to why. The whole plotting printing thing and Raster drivers.
In previous AC releases we were plotting to a HP DesignJet 600, In AC9 we started to Plot to an OCE 9400.

I just noticed plotting to OCE 9400 with AC10 that it is not producing scaled drawings. Not wanting to chase it down, I chose to print the D-size sheets instead. So far, so good. (Will be asking about printing Collated sets sometime later, for I could produce Collated sets using Print Exec LT and the PLT files created from publisher.)

I am now attempting to produce shaded walls to differentiate existing from new walls on a project. I created a new composite with a core of different fill percents (25% then tried 50% then tried 100%) and tried a solid fill and also tried the _2x Wood Frame fill (seems to sort itself with as an Empty Fill within the Attribute manager) with a Gray Cut fill background pen. In all cases the output is Dots. I could expect this with the percent fills, but not with the others.

I am still so very lost in the bitmap vs. Vector discussion, and the plotter HPGL vs. printer w/ Raster or not raster driver????

The technician that helped install the OCE had me download many different drivers to try while getting the OCE to work. The print driver that was creating the Dots was called "OCE 9400 Raster" and I am now assuming that “raster” is not what I want. I just swapped the printer driver with one that was on the system called “OCE 9400”. This driver produced shading. Even printing the 25% and 50% fills with a gray pen does a close representation of a shaded wall using the OCE 9400 driver.

So is a “raster” driver ever the choice? Both of the drivers were found in folders designated for Windows 2000, I run Win XP. Should I be looking for an updated driver?

Lastly, is it better to use a Solid Fill with a gray as the Cut Fill Pen (Which displays the Composite in the selection area in the dialog box with the solid black fill) or an Empty fill with a gray Cut Fill Background Pen (this option will show the Composite in the selection area of the composite dialog box as having a white fill even if is gray or any other color)?.