Screening again

[David Aynardi]

Still no satisfactory answer to this query.

To repeat my old question: Is there a way to screen portions of a drawing causing the line-work to print in a dot-pattern similar to the Benday dot screen used by the printing industry. This is not the same as changing the lines to color = gray.

Acad and Microstation allow layers of the drawing to be assigned standard levels of screening from a plotter control table. Once the layers are identified and plotter control (.ctb) tables are set up, consistant results can be obtained by every member of the consultant team, even though our plotters are not color-synchronized. Also, because the screens are relatively coarse, and because everything is printed in black and white, the screen tones survive being copied. (Color = gray reverts to black or drops out altogether after one or two generations of photo-copying)

Is there a way to do real screening? Is this something that will become available within the next year ('05)? Is there a 3rd party utility that could add this capability?

Please don't waste my time with the usual prattle about printing in gray color. I'm sick of explaining why this is not the same thing. Acceptable answers are:

1) Yes, and here is how to do it.

or

2) No, VW can't do it and this capability will not be added before end of '05.

[Kevin]

At the risk of "wasting your time", I offer this: Have you tried using patterns for your lines and fills?

[eric.rktek]

Using patterns as a pen style will allow you to screen your linework instead of going gray. This will still show up screened if you are using Black and White Only or Layer Colors prefs. I use the first several on the pattern menu to vary the degree of screen I want. The downside is that I don't believe you can set this as a global preference for all objects in a layer. The line pattern has to be determined by individual object.

So yes, you can screen lineweights and skip the grayscale options, but it still might not be everything you are hoping for.