4-Participant

Solved

pen colors

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
August 23, 2023
2 replies
11116 views

@MartinHanak -

I have read reams of suggestions on printing and pen tables - so much so that I have lost track of all the helpful information. Many of these strings are closed....

I see you have offered help with pen tables previously so I am hoping you can steer me in the right direction.

I have nearly what I want without a pen table when I export to pdf (color, use pen table)

my quilts are exporting as yellow and I would prefer them to be black (thin lines)

So, instead of defining all the pens I was trying to just target the pen(s) that I thought were directed to quilts and quilt edges... Thus I tried a pen table that only assigned two pens thinking the rest would stay default.

pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; outer_quilt_edge

pen 8 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; quilt_color

This did in fact change my quilt edges to a thin black line but all other colors were lost - that is I have a red note that reads "CHECK PRINT" than now shows up as black in the pdf (lost red color)

Do I have to assign all the pens in order to change this one attribute or did I make some other mistake?

Thanks for being so helpful (and patient)

Scott

currently using M140 - creo 3.0

2D Drawing

Best answer by MartinHanak

Hi,

information sources:

https://support.ptc.com/cs/cs_26/howto/plt522/plt522.htm

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS148290

The above sources contain list of color names you can use in pentable and also default assignment of colors to pens. It seems to me that the list of names is not complete. Let me know if you need additional information.

In case of quilts following information is valid:

By default inner and outer edges are plotted by pen 1.

quilt_color keyword enables you to set pen for outer edges.

magenta_color keyword enables you to set pen for inner edges.

B

BenLoosli

23-Emerald III

If you only have those 2 lines in your pen table, then you will lose all the other pen settings; they return to system defaults.

This is my table:

! This Pen Table will print everything in black with white background
! except user defined colors. Pen1 is Red.
! Pen 1 plots user defined colors.

pen 1 thickness .015 in;
pen 2 thickness .010 in; color 0 0 0; letter_color; selected_color; shaded_edge_color
pen 3 thickness .007 in; color 0 0 0; sketch_color; curve_color; primary_highlight_color
pen 4 thickness .007 in; color 0 0 0; geometry_color; edge_highlight_color
pen 5 thickness .007 in; color 0 0 0; drawing_color; preselection_highlight_color
pen 6 thickness .007 in; color 0 0 0; quilt_color; hidden_line_color
pen 7 thickness .007 in; color 0 0 0; datum_color; previewed_geometry_color
pen 8 thickness .007 in; color 0 0 0; dimmed_color; section_color; background_color

J

joojaa

11-Garnet

One can override colors by not specifying color for pen one as said in the document.

However does anybody know how to make it so that line thickness overrides also get passed to the printer layer as set. Without loosing the possibility to set default line widths.

M

MartinHanak

24-Ruby III

@joojaa wrote:

One can override colors by not specifying color for pen one as said in the document.

However does anybody know how to make it so that line thickness overrides also get passed to the printer layer as set. Without loosing the possibility to set default line widths.

Hi,

line width set in pen definition always overrides line width set in a drawing.

M

MartinHanak

Answer

24-Ruby III

Hi,

information sources:

https://support.ptc.com/cs/cs_26/howto/plt522/plt522.htm

https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article/CS148290

The above sources contain list of color names you can use in pentable and also default assignment of colors to pens. It seems to me that the list of names is not complete. Let me know if you need additional information.

In case of quilts following information is valid:

By default inner and outer edges are plotted by pen 1.

quilt_color keyword enables you to set pen for outer edges.

magenta_color keyword enables you to set pen for inner edges.

S

SL_10676292

Author

4-Participant

Thanks for your suggestions. I did some experimenting to verify what you wrote.

Many geometry items are assigned to pen 1 - I was able to verify that by changing pen one color to green and then created a pdf that resulted in a lot of green! (starts to make you wonder why an 8 pen table... but I digress.) Then I assigned red to pen 2 and verified that pen 2 had been assigned for text, dims, symbols, etc.

So I set those back to default - (eliminated any pen assignments) and then set pen 6 to red to see if there was anything of import assigned to pen 6 and the result was nil. Now I knew I had a pen available to assign color and thickness to, so I went to work trying to decode the "system color names"

this is my attempt:

pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; curve_color
pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; section_color
pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; quilt_color

quilt_color works for one of my items - I created an offset surface and then trimmed it with a sketch that included a line of text.

That method makes a beautiful appearance in the model as I can assign a color to the quilt that contracts with the part.

When it came time to make a drawing, the quilt edges printed yellow in a thick line. Now assigned to pen 6 with a thin black line they look fine.

What I COULD NOT FIND was the system color for a projected curve. As you can see, I tried curve_color and section_color but without success.

The curve projected onto a surface looks like any other curve but I could not change it to my pen 6 thin black line. Any suggestions for assigning a projected curve?

M

MartinHanak

24-Ruby III

@SL_10676292 wrote:

Thanks for your suggestions. I did some experimenting to verify what you wrote.

Many geometry items are assigned to pen 1 - I was able to verify that by changing pen one color to green and then created a pdf that resulted in a lot of green! (starts to make you wonder why an 8 pen table... but I digress.) Then I assigned red to pen 2 and verified that pen 2 had been assigned for text, dims, symbols, etc.

So I set those back to default - (eliminated any pen assignments) and then set pen 6 to red to see if there was anything of import assigned to pen 6 and the result was nil. Now I knew I had a pen available to assign color and thickness to, so I went to work trying to decode the "system color names"

this is my attempt:

pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; curve_color
pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; section_color
pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; quilt_color

quilt_color works for one of my items - I created an offset surface and then trimmed it with a sketch that included a line of text.

That method makes a beautiful appearance in the model as I can assign a color to the quilt that contracts with the part.

When it came time to make a drawing, the quilt edges printed yellow in a thick line. Now assigned to pen 6 with a thin black line they look fine.

What I COULD NOT FIND was the system color for a projected curve. As you can see, I tried curve_color and section_color but without success.

The curve projected onto a surface looks like any other curve but I could not change it to my pen 6 thin black line. Any suggestions for assigning a projected curve?

Hi,

1.] pen 6 assigned to several colors

Following notation works as expected.

pen 6 thickness .004 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0; curve_color; section_color; quilt_color

2.] curve_color vs projected curves

I tested projected curves in Creo 7.0. These curves have dark blue color in my Creo -AND- curve_color is associated with them. According to my documentation curve_color worked the same way in Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 4.0 (on 29-Sep-2009)

I can check your pentable if you upload it.

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