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Line Weights


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I decided to test the printer and the plotter in the office regarding their output re line weights. I am using VW 8.52 on Win 2000, with a ricoh network printer/copier and a Xerox 8825 plotter. What I did was make 8 line in 4 different colors, Black, Red, Grey, Green and differnt line wights from 1 to 40. Each set was drawn as vertical and horizontal lines. I set the out to to print as black for the Xerox. the Ricoh has no setting.

The Ricoh output in general is FAR superior and renders gray fills pretty acurately. The Xerox never did a very good jon with fills... The line weight test revealed that horizontal and vertical lines DO NOT PLOT/PRINT the same. And the coolors were confusing too.

Some of the finest lines appear DARKER (heavier) than the middle wright lines. The horizontal lines appeared correct and the vertical lines were not correct?

Why is the happening and how can I get lines to appear accurately whether drawn horizontall or vertically.. Perhaps diagonal lines will reveal more whackiness.

I expect that I will hear that this is a Xerox driver problem.... We will test ACAD 2000 and 14 with the same plotter/printer next week... If ACAD does not produce similiar results... I would conclude that it is a VectorWorks problem...

break.... more to follow

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Does your plotter have an asymmetrical resolution? Such as 1200 X & 600 Y? That might be one reason you are seeing differences.

<<Perhaps diagonal lines will reveal more whackiness.>>

Yes, if and when you plot diagonal lines, more wackiness will ensue. Line weights will grow as the angle of the line approaches 45?, up to 41% thicker. It is because the boys at NNA use a SQUARE pen for their graphics, a throwback to QuickDraw on the Mac. For a CAD package that prides itself as an "advanced" drafting tool, they fail miserably on this issue. Freehand figured out how to draw with a ROUND pen nearly a decade ago, so I know it can be done, NNA just has to want to badly enough. Personally, I am surprised more people haven't griped about this all along. It is, in my opinion, VectorWorks weakest detail.

Sorry NNA, I usually don't like to cast stones, but we have Super Computers on our desks and you still want us to use SQUARE pens?

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The square tipped pens used to annoy me a lot, then I found that if I print to a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file the problem goes away.

Sure it would be nice to see the rounded pens on the Mac screen, but at least it prints fine. I'm much happier now.

(I mean, printed arcs and sloped lines look OK and Brazil won the World Cup).

wink.gif" border="0 Alexandre

[ 06-30-2002: Message edited by: Alexandre B A Villares ]

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The boys in the back do not decide what prints out round and what prints out squared. It's OS specific and printer type specific.

On a PC, lines always print out round which gives the smoother transition on angled lines.

On a MAC, PostScript printers always print rounded lines. Non-Post Script printers always print square lines which gives you a much more jagged angled line.

So, line quality depends on your OS and if on a Mac, the type of printer you are using. Generally, you are going to get a much better print out on a post script printer. That's why they cost more money. The only disadvantage is they do not support true trasparency.

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Katie,You are right about printing, but how about screen display? What you get on the printer is NOT what you see on the screen. With all the critical spacing and placement of lines required to make accurate drawings, it would be a big PLUS to see what we are really drawing. Consistency is king. Without it we are lost.

Best wishes,Raymond

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