When creating drawings in Layout, I typically use Pen view to generate a simple line representation of an object I am trying to detail. I then “print > save as .pdf” these drawings to share with clients.
Sometimes objects that I believe should print out as solid, straight lines appear to get a bit jumbled up and the line thickness is uneven along an edge. See attached image for a screenshot of a .pdf copy that I made recently that shows the issue. In this particular drawing, the object being viewed is a round tube extruded along the X axis and viewed from the top, but I believe I’ve had the issue on rectilinear objects as well. I’ve gone back to my model and I have nothing drawn that would show up in that area/view other than the single tube but the line thickness isn’t consistent from left to right. This is a simple representation of an object but in more complex drawings the choppiness of the lines doesn’t look good and it can add confusion.
If I haven’t explained the issue clearly enough I will try to follow up. Any thoughts on the problem?
Any feedback from McNeel? Is this not viewed as an issue or am I the only one experiencing the problem? Should I be using different view settings to get clean lines?
See attached. I just copied the relevant objects in this particular drawing to a new .3dm and printed a page through layouts. You can see that the line thickness issue has gone away in the original spot in Detail 4, but now I have issues in a few other places on details 1 and 3.
I typically use pen view for the simple line drawing it creates, and sometimes a modified version of Pen View that eliminates creases and edges when it is needed. However, based on your previous comment, I tried changing the view options in Detail 4 to see what results I would get. In “Technical” view I get a dashed line on the right side underneath the dimension noted at 16". My understanding is that this line should be solid.
Any time the Display modes are used for hidden line removal, the printed result will always be raster output. This means the resolution and quality of the printed will be controlled by the video card.
There are two options.
Change the resolution of the print and see if that helps the rounding error you are seeing in the bar linework.
Use Make2d to generate the drawings. This will create 2D linework that can be printed as Vector. And that will make the quality of the linework perfect.
