plotting colour PDF's

Mark Crane · Post by **Mark Crane** » Fri Jun 16, 2017 2:43 pm

Hi There,

I have just upgraded to 12d V12 and having issues with plotting to colour.

i have not played with th ecolours.4d file yet and using straight out of the bad setting for 12d V12

I'm going through the "Plot frame PPF editor" i.e. printing a plan.
i have set my "plotter type" to PDF -> Full scale -> PDF colour.

hit print and it prints every thing in one colour and from what i can see all the same line weights, which makes me think that it is not finding something???

colours in the models range from colour red, green, acad 091, acad 011, acad 014, brown, blue as well as some custom colour brought forward from V11.

Please help!!!

Thanks
Mark

Mark Crane · Post by **Mark Crane** » Fri Jun 16, 2017 4:37 pm

What more can i tell you.......

I have played with the ENV file but not changing any thing that i think would change that.

I have also just tried the plotter type as below in version 11 and it also prints out only black lines.

In both version it does come up with error in the out put window saying:
error in pen_mapping - line 893

if this helps

I was about to roll V12 out in the office till this issue popped up

If i print using plotter type: 12d -> pdf_12d in v11 it prints colour but in V12 it still print just black.

hmmmmm

Regards
Mark

Sam Cech · Post by **Sam Cech** » Fri Jun 16, 2017 7:32 pm

sounds odd, as if wrong files were loaded at start,

try searching for colours.4d in the output window right after the project starts, right click on it and find
what path does it have?

if you look for pmf is there a file?
what is that path?

Owen Thornton · Post by **Owen Thornton** » Sun Jun 18, 2017 4:46 pm

Firstly, the difference between the "black" and "colour" plotters/PMFs, should only be for 12d's standard colour numbers (1-15 & 316):

header of: $SET_UPS\pmf_colour.pmf

Code: Select all

// Plotter Mapping File for FULL scale plotting.

// The 12d standard colour numbers (1-15 & 316) plot with 0.25mm pens of the matching colour, except:
//      a) white  (7) plots to black,
//      b) yellow (5) plots to a darker yellow.

// The "pen*" & "txt*" (400 series) colour numbers plot with black pens of specific weights.
// All "ppf*" (900 series) colour numbers plot with black/greyscale pens of specific weights.


default_colour	0	0	0 //Black
default_weight	0.250

header of: $SET_UPS\pmf_black.pmf

Code: Select all

// Plotter Mapping File for FULL scale plotting.

// The 12d standard colour numbers (1-15 & 316) plot with 0.25mm black pens.

// The "pen*" & "txt*" (400 series) colour numbers plot with black pens of specific weights.
// All "ppf*" (900 series) colour numbers plot with black/greyscale pens of specific weights.


default_colour	0	0	0 //Black
default_weight	0.250

... all the colour numbers not mentioned above, should plot in their native colours.

...

When everything plots out black, when it should not, it often indicates that there is an error in the PMF. This could be as simple as specifying a colour number in the PMF, that is larger than the largest colour number in the colours.4d. Such an error results in the PMF being abandoned and the plot defaulting to all black (which is the hard-wired default of the plotter mapping table, prior to its modification by the PMF).

The largest colour number in our standard colours.4d is 9999, viz:

last line of $SET_UPS\colours.4d:

Code: Select all

76 95 153 9999 "no_plot" 9999 9999 "PMF" "zzz pmf" // colour/pen numbers in PMF must be <= this number

Do you have such a line in your colours.4d?

Mark Crane · Post by **Mark Crane** » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:49 pm

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your reply's

Sam, Yes i did have problem in my colours.4d file. i copied my V11 (with my custom colours) over to V12 user folder and that created heaps of errors. so i have now corrected these errors.
It now plots in colour woohoo!!!

However it does not print my custom colours.........

wen,

This is going to bring some of your training we did in your customisation course the other month into play, right here !!!!!

So i need to add my custom colours into my pmf_colour.pmf and the other pmf_black.pmf file.....bring out the training notes.

Thanks again gents, i'll let you know how i go.

Regards
Mark

Mark Crane · Post by **Mark Crane** » Tue Jun 20, 2017 1:07 pm

Hi Guys,

Update on this.

I have added my custom colours to the colours.4d and came accross that i had to re-number a few of my "colour no." as these had been used in the new version of the colours.4d file.... this may create issues with legacy projects as it appears that they reference this for colour!

I then copied the .pmf files (pmf_black.pmf, pmf_black_half_weight.pmf, pmf_colour.pmf and pmf_colour_half_weight.pmf) to my "user" location and add all these new custom colours to them, rather painful!

Lesson learnt is that i maybe dropping my custom colours in future project in case changes happen and i have to redo all this.

Question Owen,

What makes the line weights half thick in the "half_weight.pmf" files? i've had a small play with changing the "pen_weight (mm)" column but only changed some, not all weight of my new colours. below is a snippet of the change weight of my custom colours from 0.25 to 0.125

//colour_num pen_num pen_weight(mm) //colour name
5108 5108 0.125 // ex SVY WW // Existing Survey Detail
5109 5109 0.125 // ex SVY RW // Existing Survey Detail
9999 9999 0.01 // no_plot
/// ATCW setups
383 1255 0.125 // Align
382 1024 0.125 // Structures
381 1018 0.125 // Roads

Is this where i should be changing them?

Cheers
Mark

Owen Thornton · Post by **Owen Thornton** » Tue Jun 20, 2017 1:24 pm

Hi Mark,

Note that the 12d Model reference manual states that you should not customise colours in the colour number range 0-2000, as this range is reserved for use by 12d Solutions.

But yes, that is where the pen weights are set in the PMF.

Of course, if you use any of our standard "* string weight" plotters, then any weights set explicitly on the strings will be used, instead of the PMF weights.

Cheers,
Owen.