I am trying to get all my surface edges thicker in ghosted view when printing to pdf from a Rhino 7 layout document. I have tried this in both Windows and in mac.
Essentially my problem is that the display mode and the printed or rhino PDF layout output do not look have the same surface edge line weights.
The reason I need to do this is that I use the ghosted view with some tweaks to output shop drawings.
When I set go to my tool preferences - display modes - objects. I set ghosted (or any mode) - clipping plane edges to a higher number like 10 the lines thicken in the display. They are also thicker when printed or Rhino PDF. This is great.
But when I do the above to surfaces, surface edge setting, say I up the edge thickness to 10. Then the display surfaces edges thicken. That’s what I need. But when I output the pdf the lines remain at the default thicknes. Why do the display and PDF surface edge outputs look so different?
I have tried to
Essentially the display mode and the printed PDF layout output do not look the same same.
I have tried “Match pattern method” and Match viewport display. However neither of these work.
Is there a way to increase my surface edge output line weights on a PDF without having to adjust individual layer line weights?
HI @wim
Would you be able to help with the above? Alternatively, direct me to where I can get an answer?
I published it 9 days ago and not sure if anyone saw it.
Thank you
So getting things to print consistently as WYSIWYG is quite difficult to impossible. For example: 2 pixels on a low resolution monitor will “look” thick, but 2 pixels on a very high resolution is almost invisible…so pushing the print button in both of those cases should result in what? There is really no way for the display to know how thick something “appears” to the human eye, and then therefore make the appropriate adjustments so that when it’s printed out a completely different device that it looks exactly like the screen.
If you need different line weights for edges and clipping plane intersections and you want these to be on a layout, you’ll have to use ViewCaptureToFile to create images and put these images on the layout. If the line weight can be the same, you could experiment with the scaling option in the Linetypes and Line Widths section of the PDF print dialog.
I’ve added this thread to feature request RH-15552, which is the somewhat older version of RH-29403.
-wim
Thanks for reply I am not referring to tiny nuances to the eye at all.
What I mean is that adjusting the “surface edge settings” line weight in ghosted view from 1 pixel to 10000 pixels make absolutely no difference in the output print. Surely it should ?
If I change the edge thickness for clipping plane by 1 pixel I can immediately see the difference when i print. That’s great.
Why even bother having a surface edge line weight setting if it makes no difference when you print it? Is it just for display?
No. No attempt at all was made to have a relation between those as it would be impossible to get a consistent output across hardware.
FWIW, I don’t see that here.
In the attached screenshot from the PDF output, the edges are set to be 5 pixels and the clipping plane sections to 10 pixels:
Please see attached printed clipping plane. 1px vs 100 px as set in ghosted view settings.
Process - Rhino Print to PDF - Vector Output - Output color - Display Color
As I said do the same with Surfaces Edges no difference at all.
First off - I have no idea what I am looking at in those picture of sheets of paper. There are tens of parameters that will influence that result. Without a 3dm file, your display mode, and all printing settings, it’s impossible to know what you are showing.
I tried to reproduce your findings with a layout that looks like this:
In both cases, only the wireframe detail results in vector output - as expected.
Apart from that…
Correct.
Curves and surface edges are completely different things. You can print curves as vector output but can’t do that with edges. Yes, it’d be awesome if this worked differently, and that has been number 1 on my wish list since early 1997…
Just move on.
-wim
Coming to Rhino/GH from other CAD systems, I’m really enjoying the freedom and flexibility of the modeling. I’ve been struggling with my shop drawings, so I appreciate this discussion, and other threads about lineweights, printing and display modes, thank you. In my process I’m often wondering if I am not quite getting what I want because I haven’t figured out the right settings. It is helpful to know what capabilities are actually available. I’m moving on!
