pen colors

[SL_10676292]

@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

[BenLoosli]

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

[joojaa]

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.

[MartinHanak]

---

@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.

[joojaa]

Yes, obviously but only if a override is present on the line, i can leave it un-overridden. If you leave the pen width out then it uses defaults that get picked form somewhere else or the value that the user has overridden in the line width. So where is the other default set?

so if you use a pentable with a nearly empty line for pen 1:

pen 1;

then you can set the width and color to custom and it will make the line the width in modify line style dialog. It now puts out exactly the line width you specified.

Image 1: If you do not specify width in a pen table it takes the width form the line itself. Creo on left PDF on right

But observe:

Image 2: So where did Creo pull the line width in this case? Its not zero, its also not a hairline.

So the question is when width is set to 0.0 where does it take the export value then?

 

[MartinHanak]

---

@joojaa wrote:

Yes, obviously but only if a override is present on the line, i can leave it un-overridden. If you leave the pen width out then it uses defaults that get picked form somewhere else or the value that the user has overridden in the line width. So where is the other default set?

so if you use a pentable with a nearly empty line for pen 1:

pen 1;

then you can set the width and color to custom and it will make the line the width in modify line style dialog. It now puts out exactly the line width you specified.

Image 1: If you do not specify width in a pen table it takes the width form the line itself. Creo on left PDF on right

But observe:

Image 2: So where did Creo pull the line width in this case? Its not zero, its also not a hairline.

So the question is when width is set to 0.0 where does it take the export value then?

 

---

Hi,

Note related to Image 2:

From my point of view, it makes no sense to deal with the line thickness values that you call default values. This is because these values are hardcoded and you cannot change them. See video PW.mp4 showing how you can get "default line width" information in Creo 10.0. The frame of empty drawing is drawn by pen no.1. Line width is 0.508 mm.

You must to decide if you want to control the line widths from the Creo drawing or from the pentable. Combining these variants is not good.

[Dale_Rosema]

I found my syscol.scl file.

What ?????_color would cause sheet metal to print green?

In my table.pnt all the pens are set to thickness 0.20 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0

[BenLoosli]

Custom color?

Remember the old Green side/Yellow side of sheet metal parts.

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

green sheetmetal color is "connected" to attention_color keyword. Do not forget to remove color specification from pen definition.

[Dale_Rosema]

In my syscol.scl I found:

SYSTEM_SHEETMETAL_COLOR 0.000000 100.000000 0.000000

I don't mind it displaying green, but I would like it to print black (or white).

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

forget syscol.scl file. Its contents is not important. Please publish whole contents of pentable.

Also check whether config.pro contais

use_8_plotter_pens yes

[Dale_Rosema]

table.pnt

pen 1 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 2 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 3 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 4 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 5 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 6 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 7 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0
pen 8 thickness .02 in; color 0.0 0.0 0.0

from config.pro

use_8_plotter_pens yes
pen_table_file X:\XXXX\XXXX\XXXXX\table.pnt
pen1_line_weight 2
pen2_line_weight 1
pen3_line_weight 1
pen4_line_weight 1
pen5_line_weight 1
pen6_line_weight 1
pen7_line_weight 1
pen8_line_weight 1

[MartinHanak]

Hi,

do not use file containing penX_line_weight options. Use the first one. Green sheetmetal lines are plotted by pen 5 by default.

[MartinHanak]

... correction ...

remove penX_line_weight options from config.pro.

[Dale_Rosema]

I commented "!" them out. That should work for a quick test, correct?

If so, the print out (,pdf) is still green.

[MartinHanak]

---

@Dale_Rosema wrote:

I commented "!" them out. That should work for a quick test, correct?

If so, the print out (,pdf) is still green.

---

Hi,

did you try to print the drawing? I think you did not try it. Please note that Print command always uses pentable specified in pen_table_file option.

On the other hand Save a Copy > *.pdf command does not use pentable specified in pen_table_file option by default. You have to add following option into config.pro to force Save a Copy > *.pdf command to use pentable.

pdf_use_pentable YES

[Dale_Rosema]

When "Save A Copy" -> *.pdf the color was switching from monochrome to color. Updated that and resave the setting and now it print black & white.

Thanks for all the help.

[MartinHanak · Accepted solution]

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.

[SL_10676292]

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?

[MartinHanak]

---

@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.