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dtrabattoni10-Marble
10-Marble
April 8, 2022
Question

PENTABLE file for nice and COLORFUL drawings

  • April 8, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 3104 views

Hello,
I renew the question in this closed topic: https://community.ptc.com/t5/3D-Part-Assembly-Design/Pentable-pdf-export/m-p/235673

To assign DIFFERENT color to entities which belong to the same group, for ex. LETTER_COLOR which includes dimensions, notes, cross hatch, axes and many other things.

I want to reach the COLOR printing as below:

Cattura.JPG

DIMENSIONS and NOTES: green
Then I use the following in the pentable:
pen 2 thickness .015 cm; color 0.4392 0.6588 0.3607; letter_color


Now, if I want AXES (CTRLFONT L L and CTRLFONT S L) to print in blue, I must assign a blue color (for example) to all the axes manually, and then use the following:
pen 8 thickness .018 cm; color 0.0 0.0 1.0; edge_highlite_color

For the CROSS SECTIONS, to assign RED color manually and then:
pen 4 thickness .018 cm;color 0.949 0.509 0.705; highlite_color


This is, of course, very unconfortable.
Is there any "automatic" way ?
Maybe to LAYER RULES in drawing formats ?

Thanks in advance.
Diego

2 replies

M
MartinHanak24-Ruby III
24-Ruby III
April 8, 2022

Hi,

according to my personal documentation, following keyword can be used in pen definitions. These keywords correspond with system colors.

attention_color
letter_color
highlite_color
drawing_color
half_tone_color
magenta_color
edge_highlite_color
dimmed_color
section_color
presel_highlight_color
datum_color
quilt_color
selected_color
secondary_selected_color
preview_geom_color
secondary_preview_color
curve_color

 

If you want to continue in discussion, please create and upload part, drawing, PDF.

D
dtrabattoni10-MarbleAuthor
10-Marble
April 8, 2022

Thanks Martin, will upload a simple .drw

However, I understand about the " section_color " keyword for ex.

But tried using like here....but doesn't have any effect: 

pen 4 thickness .018 cm;color 0.949 0.509 0.705; section_color

(pen 4 corresponds to red color highlight but you need to manually color the section)

 

It seems you need to assign one of these designated system colors to the entities you want to color; then following the correspondant keyword in the pentable and finally assigning a color  (RGB value divided by 255).

Cattura2.JPG

 

M
MartinHanak24-Ruby III
24-Ruby III
April 8, 2022
@dtrabattoni wrote:

Thanks Martin, will upload a simple .drw

However, I understand about the " section_color " keyword for ex.

But tried using like here....but doesn't have any effect: 

pen 4 thickness .018 cm;color 0.949 0.509 0.705; section_color

(pen 4 corresponds to red color highlight but you need to manually color the section)

 

It seems you need to assign one of these designated system colors to the entities you want to color; then following the correspondant keyword in the pentable and finally assigning a color  (RGB value divided by 255).

Cattura2.JPG

 

Hi,

FYI ... section_color is related to Sketch features (not related to x-hatching).

P
19-Tanzanite
pausob19-Tanzanite
19-Tanzanite
April 9, 2022

Not sure I can answer what you are asking, to be honest; I'm writing this to improve my understanding.  Color schemes and pen assignments in Creo are a nightmare, in my opinion.

There is no consistency, the documentation is lacking and you end up trying to decode the system which started and seemingly stayed at the ancient age of 4-pen plotters...

 

I mean, when specifying the color scheme in the System-Appearance configuration UI, there is this palette:

pausob_0-1649488165402.png

When it is exported to a .SCL file, the names are:

 

SYSTEM_BACKGROUND_COLOR 0.000000 14.901961 14.901961 
SYSTEM_DIMMED_MENU_COLOR 70.196078 85.098039 60.000000 
SYSTEM_LETTER_COLOR 100.000000 74.901961 25.098039 
SYSTEM_HIGHLIGHT_COLOR 5.098039 100.000000 80.000000 
SYSTEM_EDGE_HIGH_COLOR 90.196078 0.000000 0.000000 
SYSTEM_GEOMETRY_COLOR 80.000000 85.098039 94.901961 
SYSTEM_HIDDEN_COLOR 40.000000 50.196078 40.000000 
SYSTEM_SHEETMETAL_COLOR 10.196078 60.000000 40.000000 
SYSTEM_CURVES_COLOR 10.196078 74.901961 74.901961 
SYSTEM_VOLUME_COLOR 0.000000 80.000000 0.000000 
SYSTEM_SECTION_COLOR 5.098039 45.098039 100.000000 
SYSTEM_PRESEL_HIGHLIGHT_COLOR 94.901961 34.901961 5.098039 
SYSTEM_SELECTED_COLOR 100.000000 100.000000 54.901961 
SYSTEM_SECONDARY_SELECTED_COLOR 45.098039 63.137255 50.980392 
SYSTEM_PREVIEW_GEOM_COLOR 14.901961 74.901961 20.000000 
SYSTEM_SECONDARY_PREVIEW_COLOR 50.196078 20.000000 50.196078 
SYSTEM_DATUM_COLOR 70.196078 74.901961 20.000000 
SYSTEM_QUILT_COLOR 100.000000 80.000000 20.000000 
SYSTEM_SHADED_EDGE_COLOR 30.196078 30.196078 30.196078

 

( 19 named colors...  note they're specified in terms of % of RGB.  Which one corresponds to "Sketch" in the GUI? - through trial and error, I've decoded that it is SYSTEM_SECTION_COLOR)  Anyway, this is a bit of a behind-the-scenes detail but I want to illustrate the inconsistencies.

 

So then, you can assign a color to display on the screen for common elements - but from a reduced palette of 13 "Theme Colors":

pausob_3-1649490289079.png

Note the tooltip - values specified as of 0-255... and that selected is the "Datum" color.

 

 

 

It is curious that when you use the "Format" menu in the ribbon, for example, to assign color to text, it seems you have 16 "system colors" to choose from:

pausob_5-1649492469660.png

 

 

 

So then in the pen table, you can assign a pen with is own color and linestyle - to use when printing all things assigned to a specific "system color", as per the list provided by @MartinHanak - which has 17 different names; I think they are same as the 17 system colors listed in this table from PTC:

Default pen assignments 

But my head is already spinning at this time.  Which one from the configuration UI corresponds to "magenta_color", "half_tone_color", "drawing_color" to be specified in the pen table???

 

 

Anyway, if I want axes to print as blue, then I see two ways of doing it.  With reference to my color-scheme above (note use of the "Datum" color for drawing axis center lines - the default is I think is to use the "Letter" color):

1) in the pen table (.pnt) file, I add this line:

 

pen 9 thickness 0.006 in; color 0 0 1; datum_color;

 

(note: pens 1-8 do not have the ;datum_color tag)

so in this example, my axes, even though they are colored "greenish-brown" on my screen, will actually print out as blue.

 

or

2) I make the "Datum" color blue in the UI, and then in the pen table, I can remove the color override:

pen 9 thickness 0.006 in; datum_color;

 

 

Also, on my system, I have pen 1 specified without any color or assignment:

 

pen 1 thickness .003 in;

 

 

Then in my models / drawings, whatever I painted as a "user defined" color:

pausob_2-1649489749278.png

will be printed in that user-defined color.  So for example, the text for your view names that are in blue - you could color such special text a user defined blue color which would be printed using pen 1 (and the "letter" color would be specified as green in the UI or assigned to a green pen in the pen table)

 

One last thing:

By "printing" I mean exporting to PDF, and having the config.pro setting:

pdf_use_pentable yes

 

hope this helps you.  Good luck!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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