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lecan
Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 13
Location: Belfast
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 Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:50 am Post subject: Line weights - is it just me? |
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I remember a long time ago - was it PowerDraw? - I used to be able to get a beautiful thin line with finesse on a setting of 0.08mm.and this was on a HP designjet 220. On various powercadd updates and mac operating system updates over the years Powercadd seems to lost this finesse on output and I now use a HP designjet T610 ?
Am I missing a trick here or has the development of Powercadd lost something along the way. Has anyone else noticed this ? |
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phansford
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 832
Location: SW Ohio
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 5:45 am Post subject: |
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I have noticed this also... but I don't think its a PC issue. I was using PC6 and PC8 in OS 10.5 and we were getting thinner lines. So I would rule out PC as the issue. (FWIW - we use .25 or .15 for rendering masonry on elevations and this is where we noticed the issue)
We have worked around this by rendering those thinner lines in a different color - such as red. Previously we used black for new and blue for existing. So now we have added a color to the palette.
I wonder if its all of the "gimpy" print drivers. |
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lecan
Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 13
Location: Belfast
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 11:02 am Post subject: |
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Possibly phansford
Its not a critical topic but the reality seems to be that PowerCadd cannot seem to achieve a hairline output quite as 'hairline' as some other programmes.
As a layman, something dictates the minimum line thickness achievable and I seem to deduce that its not the printer or the printer driver - given my past experience ?javascript:emoticon(' ') |
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Alfred Scott
Joined: 15 Apr 2004
Posts: 749
Location: Richmond, VA
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 11:37 am Post subject: |
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Postscript printers have an interpreter in them and the way the language works is that a line weight of zero is interpreted by the printer as the thinnest line the printer can produce. So a 600 dpi printer would produce a line 1/600 of an inch wide.
As a practical matter this became an unreliable thing because you might get a good line on one printer and an invisible line on a type setter. So what started out as an asset turned into a liability. Or said another way, the feature turned into a problem.
The Quartz system that Apple uses behaves in a different way, and it's not actually an interpreted language anymore, even though the 'commands' are the same.
So this has nothing to do with PowerCADD, which draws the image using Quartz. From there, a 'dumb' printer will use the image that Quartz produces and a Postscript printer will use the Postscript language. It used to be important to have a Postscript printer, but today the work is all done on the computer, so the dumber the printer, the better.
Alfred |
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Matt
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 525
Location: Sterling, Virginia
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 11:55 am Post subject: |
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| I think I should be able to set up multiple copies of a tool that differ in attributes, lineweight for example, so I could save myself the need to constantly click and adjust them as I create drawn objects. I can not explain why this feature (analog of a set of rapidographs sitting on the side of your desk, or of pencils of different lead weights -- remember how to draw) does not exist yet. |
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phansford
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 832
Location: SW Ohio
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Matt wrote: | | I think I should be able to set up multiple copies of a tool that differ in attributes, lineweight for example, so I could save myself the need to constantly click and adjust them as I create drawn objects. I can not explain why this feature (analog of a set of rapidographs sitting on the side of your desk, or of pencils of different lead weights -- remember how to draw) does not exist yet. |
Well - that pen set does exist in PC. As I understand it. You select your tool, set your attributes, then off you go. You can create stationary with all of the preferences set to the line weights, text font, arrows, and so on. Someone (Derek maybe) created the macro for preferences.
Am we talking about the same thing? Or are you talking that there would be 10 virtual rapidos on your desktop and you pick the one you want and draw.
If I interpret Alfred's skillful explanation correctly, all this quartz and postscript stuff basically means that the computer in translating stuff from English into German into Chinese then into Latin and we get heavier line weights than we use to get  |
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Matt
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 525
Location: Sterling, Virginia
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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| phansford wrote: | Or are you talking that there would be 10 virtual rapidos on your desktop and you pick the one you want and draw.
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yes. that is what I want. Revolutionary idea, not? |
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phansford
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 832
Location: SW Ohio
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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Sarcasm you speak I hope.
That would be a pain in the rear. I prefer one tool. I just need to learn more about changing things universally. Such as when I change scale - I can change pen weights within a menu or something. |
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Peter Severin Carlsen
Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 105
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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I still have not been able to get PC-6 or 7 to print lines as thin and clearly as they do under PC-2000. Diagonal lines are not as sharp. The edges of curves end up looking like they were printed on a dot matrix printer. I'm not pleased.
I understand from the discussion that this is an Apple "improvement" that solves one problem and created another.
So I have trouble using the newer versions of the software because the drawings don't look as good when they're printed. Isn't that what a lot of people say they're interested...how good their drawings look.
I have wondered if you reduce the scale when printing if it also reduces the line weight. In other words printing a D sized sheet on 12 x 18 paper ends up with proportionately smaller lines. Or are we stuck with a 1 point line will print as a one point line whether printed full scale or at a 25% its original size?
_________________
Peter Carlsen |
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Matt
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 525
Location: Sterling, Virginia
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| Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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| phansford wrote: |
That would be a pain in the rear. I prefer one tool. I just need to learn more about changing things universally. Such as when I change scale - I can change pen weights within a menu or something. |
You can choose to scale lineweights currently, as a result of the software company attending to user feedback. It happens. |
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lecan
Joined: 07 Jan 2009
Posts: 13
Location: Belfast
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:53 am Post subject: |
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I'm with you Peter...
Does anyone recollect if this has been flagged up before ?
I remember flagging it up with my local distributer yrs ago when I first noticed it (although I kind of learned to live with it) and to this day it remained unforthcoming as to why it was happening.
Maybe Peter and I have a particular presentation style ( or once did have)
Don't get me wrong I still love PowerCadd but surely, given the world community out there, would Engineered Software or anyone else not have found a way around this by now ?
Is Alfred saying the problem lies with the Mac OS ? |
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phansford
Joined: 18 Apr 2004
Posts: 832
Location: SW Ohio
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 6:10 am Post subject: |
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| lecan wrote: |
Maybe Peter and I have a particular presentation style ( or once did have)
Don't get me wrong I still love PowerCadd but surely, given the world community out there, would Engineered Software or anyone else not have found a way around this by now ?
Is Alfred saying the problem lies with the Mac OS ? |
Yes and no...... he is saying its with the OS AND the "loss" of postscript prinitng.... if I understand him correctly. and he is saying it is not PC.
Its interesting ....... things change (technology - whatever) but we don't want to change..... we have it "all worked out". But this issue is not different than years ago. We would do a color rendering in marker or pencil..... get it photographed (BTW - I worked at a place with its own photo department and it had the largest large format camera in east of the Mississippi.).... and the color would look like mud......
So back to the drawing board, realizing that certain colors did not reproduce well.... we would develop a palette that we would use as a standard....... then wouldn't you know it .... a color would be discontinued, a manufacturer would change.... film changed.... and we would go through the whole process again.
I look at all of this computer (line weight, colors and so on) the same way. Each time I change printers, plotters, upgrade software, change hardware.... there is going to be some tweaking of my standards. Its a fact of life. There are so many hands and fingers into this stuff its hard to say who is creating the problem.... but then again maybe they resolved another problem.
So as I stated earlier - I have adjusted my standard to using red for thinner repetitive line work. That is where I typically have the problem - rendering brick courses (I only show the horizontal line) - I have alleviated the problem.
Now that the problem has been identified. Maybe ES can let us know what they think the issue could be and if they can attempt a "fix" on their end. |
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jasonlocher
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Posts: 649
Location: Austin, Texas
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:32 am Post subject: |
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| Matt wrote: | | I think I should be able to set up multiple copies of a tool that differ in attributes, lineweight for example, so I could save myself the need to constantly click and adjust them as I create drawn objects. I can not explain why this feature (analog of a set of rapidographs sitting on the side of your desk, or of pencils of different lead weights -- remember how to draw) does not exist yet. |
do you use the blossom pallete? |
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Matt
Joined: 13 Apr 2004
Posts: 525
Location: Sterling, Virginia
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:18 pm Post subject: |
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| yeah... ? |
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jasonlocher
Joined: 14 Apr 2004
Posts: 649
Location: Austin, Texas
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:27 pm Post subject: |
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you can put multiple copies of tools in blossom, each with its own unique default attribute. |
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