R7 printing flat shaded to vector fails

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Hi, what do you think I’m doing wrong here?

3dm, output pdf and display mode ini attached. Display mode for printing is called Print2-Shaded. I want to be able to use surfaces instead of solid hatches to print shaded with nice, flat colors. Tried to adjust the lighting scheme to what I thought was the world’s simplest setup to get flat colors in all view orientations. If I turn off layers containing surface objects and print, the curves, hatches and annotations all print successfully to vector.

Figure this has to be possible somehow. Thanks for any input.

SystemInfo

Rhino 7 SR36 2023-12-12 (Rhino 7, 7.36.23346.16351, Git hash:master @ 11a364321297eb8cdb34405a3308d8911f58706d)
License type: Commercial, build 2023-12-12
License details: Cloud Zoo

Windows 10 (10.0.17134 SR0.0) or greater (Physical RAM: 16Gb)

Computer platform: LAPTOP - Plugged in [100% battery remaining]

Non-hybrid graphics configuration.
Primary display and OpenGL: NVIDIA Quadro P2000 with Max-Q Design (NVidia) Memory: 4GB, Driver date: 12-1-2023 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 537.99
> Integrated accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)
- Windows Main Display is laptop’s integrated screen or built-in port

Secondary graphics devices.
Intel(R) UHD Graphics P630 (Intel) Memory: 1GB, Driver date: 2-18-2021 (M-D-Y).
> Integrated graphics device with 3 adapter port(s)
- There are no monitors attached to this device. Laptop lid is probably closed

OpenGL Settings
Safe mode: Off
Use accelerated hardware modes: On
Redraw scene when viewports are exposed: On
Graphics level being used: OpenGL 4.6 (primary GPU’s maximum)

Anti-alias mode: 4x
Mip Map Filtering: Linear
Anisotropic Filtering Mode: High

Vendor Name: NVIDIA Corporation
Render version: 4.6
Shading Language: 4.60 NVIDIA
Driver Date: 12-1-2023
Driver Version: 31.0.15.3799
Maximum Texture size: 32768 x 32768
Z-Buffer depth: 24 bits
Maximum Viewport size: 32768 x 32768
Total Video Memory: 4 GB

Rhino plugins that do not ship with Rhino
C:\Users\Armen\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\packages\7.0\ColorPicker\6.0.0\ColorPicker.rhp “ColorPicker”
C:\Users\Armen\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\packages\7.0\NVIDIADenoiser\0.4.3\NVIDIADenoiser.Windows.rhp “NVIDIADenoiser.Windows” 0.4.3.0

Rhino plugins that ship with Rhino
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\Commands.rhp “Commands” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\rdk.rhp “Renderer Development Kit”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\RhinoRenderCycles.rhp “Rhino Render” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\RhinoRender.rhp “Legacy Rhino Render”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\rdk_etoui.rhp “RDK_EtoUI” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\rdk_ui.rhp “Renderer Development Kit UI”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\NamedSnapshots.rhp “Snapshots”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\IronPython\RhinoDLR_Python.rhp “IronPython” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\RhinoCycles.rhp “RhinoCycles” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\Grasshopper\GrasshopperPlugin.rhp “Grasshopper” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\Toolbars\Toolbars.rhp “Toolbars” 7.36.23346.16351
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\3dxrhino.rhp “3Dconnexion 3D Mouse”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 7\Plug-ins\Displacement.rhp “Displacement”
C:\Users\Armen\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\packages\7.0\SectionTools\2021.4.30.511\SectionTools.rhp “SectionTools”

image
image2254×1797 373 KB

Print2-Shaded.ini (13.7 KB)

vectorshadedwhynot.pdf (104.2 KB)

vectorshadedwhynot.3dm (1.3 MB)

2

If layers containing hatches have transparency, printing to vector works. If the hatches have no transparency, the PDF comes out raster. Any ideas?

3

Hi -

No, you can’t print surfaces to vector PDF.

I’m not seeing that here.
There are 35 layers in the file you posted and I don’t know which combination of on-off shows me what you are testing with. I’ve extracted the borders of the surfaces that are visible when opening that file, and used those to create new hatches.
image

Printing that to vector PDF seems to work fine.

-wim

4

Thank you for the response.

Yes, proprietary, despite being super simple. I deleted objects off the layers and left them in the on and off state corresponding to my last printing attempts.

If I have an aesthetic goal in mind, with Rhino I need to organize lots of combinations of objects in order to get them to print like I want (curves vs edges, draw order, disappearing text, print preview turns itself on and off, remembering to reset buried print dialog options every session, model vs layouts, Rhino color settings for “background”, what you see is just not what you get, sorry). Best method to staying organized is layers. Printing in Rhino is still a fragile process and it takes what I consider to be a major time commitment just to manage. Sometimes 1-2 dozen test prints to get it looking right, even once. I’m not doing the Make2D dance to generate design options - been there, done that.

Kind of a shame that even truly flat shading surfaces doesn’t print to vector. Hatches it is, then.

Suppose I’ll hold out hope for R8 layouts and printing getting smoothed out? This was welcome.

5

I’m sure there’s always room for fine tuning and a near endless list of wishes for new features. I’m only sorely missing section style output when it comes to vector output. That was working in some of the latest WIP versions last year, so I’m hoping this can be added in Rhino 8 at some point.

Printing settings not being stored in the 3dm file is a major pain in general, but I’m told there is no easy fix for that.

Apart from that, you’ll have to get specific about your concerns with layouts and printing in Rhino 8 so that I can check the status.
-wim