line weights and Not using Color

[Eric Milberger]

To start - that last job I created cost close to $1,000.00 per set printed at print shops in Phoenix - All B&W

So color is not an option unless we create the plots in house

So I am starting to create a new set of pens that are all Black and follow the Autocad and Microstation line widths.

We plot in Black and White so at some point I want to see if the drawing is readable and looks as nice as the ones we do by hand.

It may have to do with the high resolution 4k screens we use but line widths don't do much of anything until I zoom in - and this makes the drawings harder to read and to tell if we are doing a good job in telling the story.

Is there a setting to make the weights display a little more proactively?

I may use some shadows to enhance our documents but cannot use color.

[Eric Milberger]

I wanted to add

We use colored lines when in the Models and B&W in 2d drawings especially SHEETS ARE ALWAYS B&W.
IT helps to catch thinks since the drawings are B&W anyway.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Eric wrote:
It may have to do with the high resolution 4k screens we use but line widths don't do much of anything until I zoom in - and this makes the drawings harder to read and to tell if we are doing a good job in telling the story.

Is there a setting to make the weights display a little more proactively?

I am wondering if it would be possible to create a Pen Set especially for the purpose of displaying lines on the screen.
What I am thinking is you would create a Pen Set in which every Pen's thickness is 50% larger than in the final published document. This way those Pens would be displayed correctly even when you are less zoomed in.
I don't know if this would achieve the purpose, you would have to try.

[Eric Milberger]

I am having quick difficulty as it is more of a remember this red is this wait and this red is this other weight and on screen this yellow is very thick but looks faded out so looks thin.....

It is not WYSISYG kind of approach. Goes back to the old days in the early 80's when autocad plotted by color for weights.

[Barry Kelly]

I work in Archicad with a coloured pen set with various weights just as you seem to be doing.
However also have a 'black/grey' pen set that has all the same pen weights but the pens are various shades of black, grey & white to my choosing.
For example I decide if a yellow pen is going to be black, grey or white.

Then in the layouts I set all the drawings to use the 'black/grey' pen set rather than the default colour pen set.
And I set the 'Colours' option to be 'Defined by Pen Set'.


I set my Publisher up to save as PDF files and in the PDF options I leave it set to print as 'Colour', but of course because they are black/grey pens, they will print exactly as they are.

At no time do I let Archicad or the PDF converter translate a colour pen to grey scale.


At any time in Archicad I can switch to the 'black/grey' pen set to see what it looks like on screen.
It may not help with the display of the pen thickness - you may still have to zoom in/out to register the different weight lines.
Unless you are zoomed in close enough, a thick line will look the same as a thin line.
It may be more prevalent on a 4K monitor - I don't know as I don't have one.


Barry.

[Eric Milberger]

Barry - thanks for your approach - that is where I was headed but did not want to design the wheel without considering color.
Autocad set a pooe example based on a plotter's inability to do much
And it stuck for some reason. I appreciate your comments.