Printer Settings

Define the settings for a new printer or change the settings of an existing printer, such as the printer name, driver and the printing of lines, colors, text, etc. You can change the settings of an existing printer by clicking Printer settings in the Print dialog box.

The default printer settings are defined when adding a printer. They are saved in the ../user/DEFPLOT.SETTINGS file. You can change the settings temporarily for a specific printing task. The change is valid until you start the software again, and the default printer settings are loaded from the setup file.

Page 1

Name

The printer name, which will be displayed in the printer list.

Destination

The destination can be either a printer or a file, for example printing a PostScript file in ./print.eps. The file will be saved in the user folder.

Driver

The driver can be either HPGL/2, Other (another driver), PostScript Level 2P or Windows driver.

Driver code

Will be determined automatically by the choice of driver.

Remove Hidden Lines

Select whether to print the hidden lines or not.

Colors by screen and line widths by scale

Select either of the following:

• Yes - The lines will be printed with the colors displayed on the screen and with true line widths taking into account the printing scale selected in the Print dialog box. None of the line width files or pen sets will be used, but the Linewidth file on Page 2 will receive the value [None], and the Pen set will receive the value -1.

  If you want to print the lines in the colors displayed on the screen, but set the line width you want for all lines, select the check box under Custom line width instead of true ones, and enter the line width in the text box. The minimum width is 0.01.

• No - The lines will be printed according to the Linewidth file or Pen group defined on Page 2 regardless of the printing scale selected in the Print dialog box.

Print grid

Select whether to print the grid or not.

Print text

Select whether text is to be printed as text or lines.

Print circles

Select whether circles are to be printed as lines or circles.

Default sheet

Sets the size of the default sheet when any driver other than a Windows driver is selected. Select the sheet size, if necessary

Page 2

Initial, final and information string

Define the strings for the printer, if necessary.

Linewidth

You can define the line widths of a drawing to be printed with a pen set and the line width values filled in the fields, when

• you select No for Colors by screen and true linewidths and
• you select [None] from the Linewidth file list, in which case a line width file is not used.

All the lines will be printed with black color.

The pens 1-8 have been defined as a pen set in the system settings. Enter the number of the pen set in the Pen set field.

Line-width file

You can define the line widths and colors of a drawing to be printed with a pen set and a line width file, when you select No for Colors by screen and true linewidths. When you have selected other than [None] as the line width file, the Linewidth fields are not available.

The line width file defines the line widths and colors to be used for the pen set in printing. Enter the number of the pen set in the Pen set field.

The default line width file is NORMAL.LSET. Other line width files included in the basic software delivery are: COLOR.LSET (colors for line widths), NONE.LSET (all lines as thin as possible), THICK.LSET (all lines with line width 0.5) and THIN.LSET (all lines with line width 0.18).

You can create your own line width files in the ../custom/fonts folder. The extension .lset needs to be added to the file name.

Print date

You can print the file name and date to the output. Select the location on the sheet for printing the data from the list. By default, the date is not included in the printout.

Pen set

The pen sets have been defined in the system settings, in the DRAFT keyword group with the keywords plot_pen. The pen set divides the lines in a drawing for pens 1-n according to the line width limits. For example:

• Pen 1 draws lines of width 0.00 - 0.10.
• Pen 2 draws lines of width 0.11 - 0.13.
• Pen 3 draws lines of width 0.14 - 0.18.
• Etc.

The lines may be of any color and on any layer in the drawing.

The line widths and colors of the pens in the output are defined by the selected Linewidth file. For example, when the line width file NORMAL.LSET is used:

• Pen 1 (lines of width 0.00 - 0.10 in the drawing) are printed with width 0.10 and grey color
• Pen 2 (lines of width 0.11 - 0.13 in the drawing) are printed with width 0.13 and darker grey color.
• Pen 3 (lines of width 0.14 - 0.18 in the drawing) are printed with width 0.18 and black color.
• Etc.

If the Linewidth file is [None], the pens will be printed using the line widths in the Linewidth section, and with black color.

The default pen set is 1. If you have defined a pen set of your own in the settings, enter its number in the text field.

Resolution

The default print resolution value is 300 dpi. You can change this value if necessary.

Resolution also affects the printing of raster images.

The effect of resolution value in PDF and PostScript (driver code 7 5) printing

If the resolution value is larger than 0 during printing, all raster images in the drawing will be printed out at most in the resolution which was specified. The number of pixels printed of the original raster image in the drawing depends on the sheet size used in printing and the specified resolution.

For example, when the width of the raster image on the printout is one inch, and 300 was specified as the resolution, the raster image on the printout will be 300 pixels wide. If the raster image originally had more pixels, some pixels will be lost and the quality of the image will be degraded. Otherwise, the printed image will have the original number of pixels.

If no resolution has been specified, the value is 0. All raster images will then be printed out with their original number of pixels regardless of the sheet size used for printing.

In PDF printing, we recommend using resolution value 0 by default so that the images will be saved in their original resolution. Resolution only needs to be separately defined when the drawing includes high-resolution raster images which you wish to print out in a smaller resolution due to printing speed or file size.

Other register

Sets one other register.