Printing color lines as black (NOT gray) in VW 10.5

[jckii]

Is there a simple way to do this - without changing the actual on-screen display to black only, in "Document Preferences"? (I actually don't know if this even affects printer outpu...)

In earlier versions of VW (like 10, and 9) printing black-line only was possible through a pull-down in the "Print" dialogue. in 10.5 and 11 the only option is to print color as grayscale, either on or off. Thus a blue line, for example, on a color plotter, will only print as blue or gray. This is no good - if items are colored by class, which they have to be in a complex drawing for effective class and lineweight control/monitoring, there has to be a way to print in black only. Any ideas?

[Robert Anderson]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is a function of the printer driver, not VectorWorks. Why not simply use the Black and White option?

[jckii]

That's exactly what I used to do. There was a black and white option under "Finishing" in the pull-down as part of the "print" dialogue. That was with v10 - or maybe earlier, like v9. Once we upgraded to 10.5, this option disappeared. But I'll try updating my printer driver anyway...

[Robert Anderson]

No, I mean the B&W document preference in VectorWorks. Why not use that?

[Guest]

jckii -

Robert is correct - the finishing was a setting of the printer itself, not of VectorWorks.

In VW 11, you can also use the batch print which has an option for black and white or color.

[Robert Anderson]

Actually, Batch Print is not part of VectorWorks, but it is in the Industry Series (Architect, Landmarke, Mechanical, Spotlight).

[jckii]

Thanks for the info on VW 11. However I am generally working in 10.5

I have updated my printer drivers with the most current one available from HP (for the HP designjet 800ps). I still have no "print black and white only" option in the printer dialogue. Why would this setting option disappear from my printer driver? Could it be an OSX issue (I upgraded at the same time I upgraed to VW 10.5) Can you help me with the printer driver issue, if that is indeed what it is?

Using the "black and white only" option in document prefs is tedious and unwieldy - color is essential to the draftng process, and changing the actual document prefs to black and white, and then back again, every time I need to print, doesn't make sense. There must be a better way.

[Robert Anderson]

Printer manufacturers change their printer drivers all the time.

Why not just use a toggle script to turn B&W on and off for the current docuemnt? Here's one:

{*cut and paste the following into VectorScript*}

Procedure ToggleBW;

BEGIN

SetPref(10,NOT(GetPref(10)));

END;

RUN(ToggleBW);

[jckii]

That's not bad! Thank you.

I wonder if there's anyway of automatically tying this command to the "Print" command? (Ie, so that invoking "print" simultaneously toggles to black-and-white) I'm certainly no script expert - but would this be possble?

[Robert Anderson]

This has been done already for you. All you have to do is upgrade to VW11 and use Batch Print.