Hidden lines show light on PDF but not on printouts

[ptc-4954417]

I am having an issue with ProE5/Creo Elements. When I export a print to a PDF I can see the hidden lines, they are a light brown or green but when printed to paper they are so faint they really cant be seen. I have been through the whole pen table line thickness issue so I assumed it would be fixed there. From reading the hidden lines are driven by pen3, is that correct? Below is my current pen table

pen 1 thickness 0.003 in

pen 2 thickness 0.005 in; letter_color,magenta_color,half_tone_color

pen 4 thickness 0.010 in; drawing_color

pen 5 thickness 0.005 in; attention_color

pen 6 thickness 0.005 in; section_color

pen 7 thickness 0.002 in; dimmed_color

pen 8 thickness 0.007 in; highlite_color,edge_highlite_color

I then added a pen 3 to see if it whould help. Do I need to restart Proe for it to read the new changes? Do I need to redirect it to the file again once changes are made? Any help appreciated. Thanks

pen 1 thickness 0.003 in

pen 2 thickness 0.005 in; letter_color,magenta_color,half_tone_color

pen 3 thickness 0.010 in; black_color

pen 4 thickness 0.010 in; drawing_color

pen 5 thickness 0.005 in; attention_color

pen 6 thickness 0.005 in; section_color

pen 7 thickness 0.002 in; dimmed_color

pen 8 thickness 0.007 in; highlite_color,edge_highlite_color

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[dschenken]

The difficult-to-read ouput is a function of two things - one is using color output from Pro/E, which produces colored lines in the PDF. The other is not forcing the printer (guessing it is not a color printer) to use black as a replacement for all colors.

I don't have documentation on what PTC does in generating PDFs. I've always generated Postscript output by printing to a file and used Adobe Distiller to convert to PDF. Using this method I select the Generic Postscript driver, which is black lines on white paper.

Save As using CGM required the replacement of the system colors with ones that made the background white and the lines black, otherwise it would export just like on the screen - with nearly invisible yellow dimension lines - which wasn't suitable for reports. The same would work for PDF, with a custom system color map.

As far as forcing colors to black, this is a function of the printer driver. If it's available it works well. By default, the printer will try to match the value (brightness) of the item. If it is a pale color, there won't be much printed.

[ptc-4954417]

Actually I am using a color printer. I even tried it in grey scale to hopefully make the lines darker and with no luck. If I could just change the color of the lines in CAD I think that would help or even fix the problem. I cant even figure out how to do just that. Any suggestions? Thanks

[Dale_Rosema]

Check out this discussion and see if that will get you the answer that you are looking for:

http://communities.ptc.com/message/223399#223399

Thanks, Dale

[Dale_Rosema]

And also this one (it may be the better of the two):

http://communities.ptc.com/message/221582#221582

Thanks, Dale

[dschenken · Accepted solution]

Good find Dale,

This is the best part for using the pen tables: http://communities.ptc.com/message/221492#221492

Notice that the three numbers following the width for each pen number are on a scale of 0 to 100 for red, green, and blue components, so white is 100 100 100 and black is 0 0 0. At least they can be decimal fractions.

Otherwise (works for non-pentable exports):

Go to View->Display Settings->System Colors.

Save a copy of the default so you know where it is - you'll want it back.

Change all the colors to Black, except Background, which should be White (unless background color makes no difference for PDF)

Save this color set - you'll want it back.

Make your PDFs and then go back to the System Colors and View->Display Settings->System Colors ->File->Open your original set.

Any time you like you can restore the B&W set for Save As / PDF purposes.

[ptc-4954417]

Thanks for the simple solution. All I needed to do is go into system colors and change hidden lines to black and then PDF it out. On the screen at that point the hidden lines blended with the black background so I just needed to remember when I was done to change them back to green. Thanks again.