Line Weights - help please

[Jenni73]

Hello

Can anyone help me?

I'm not able to set my line weights to less than 1/16 points, 1 mils, 0.02mm.

Does anyone know how to make them smaller than this?

The problem is with my drawings at 1:200 the minimum line is too heavy... if I can't change my line weights in Vectorworks, is there another way round this? e.g. importing/ exporting etc etc

Many thanks, Jenni

[Dieter @ DWorks]

If you make a VP, you can scale the lineweights in the 'advance' button of the vp.

[Pat Stanford]

Are you talking about on screen or on your printout? I find that a 1 mil line on my 600 DPI laser printer is almost unreadable. If I fax the printout anythin less than about 12 points has a great chance to be lost.

If it is on screen go to the Preferences and turn on the Zoom Line Thickness option. This will show the actual set line thickness as you zoom in. This will give you a better idea of how the printout will look.

Remember, the screen has a resolution of between 1/72 and 1/100 inch. Anything less than about 30 point / 0.3 mm will be shown as 1 pixel on screen greatly overestimating their weight at a 100% zoom.

Pat

[P Retondo]

Jenni, I'm trying to figure out why you are asking this. I think it's because you are zooming in to look at two 1 mil lines in your 1:200 layer, and they look fat and run together.

If this is the case, I think you are trying to show too much detail for a drawing at this scale. If you want to excerpt this drawing, and show a portion of it at a larger scale, use the viewport method, even without scaling lineweights. You can show a portion of your drawing at 1/4" scale and the lines will still print at 1 mil, but will appear to be a lot thinner relative to the things you are drawing.

Remember that in VW lineweight is for the printer's benefit. The line thickness is not like an object's thickness, and is not interpreted relative to the size of "real" objects. As Pat points out, anything smaller than 2 mil won't print consistently on even the finest printers.