background mask plotting gray dotted lines

[brendashearon]

We are using Autocad 2014, we recently changed our dimension style fill color to background in lieu of none. This way when we are labeling components on our drawings our text would be to the front and the lines would be to the back. Before we would trim all lines around text which was tedious. We have lines merge on which is a must for our firm. When we plot or create pdf files, there are random gray dotted lines either to the left or left and top of the text where the background mask box is located (see attachment). It is not every dimension or multiline leader text. We plot to an Oce Plotwave 300 (printer driver ocegdi11.hdi). The lines are more faint on the plots than the pdf file, but are on both. Also tried plotting a pdf file within autocad with the dwg to pdf.pc3 (printer driver pdfplot11.hdi) with lines merge on and it created the lines also.  If I use the adobe pdf (printer driver gdiplot.hdi) it did not put the lines. Adobe pdf will not work for us because it is set to lines overwrite instead of lines merge. When I changed the adobe pdf to lines merge it created a filled color region behind my dimensions and masked text. I contacted AcroPlot which is the program we use to create pdf files and they said it is a bug in Autocad, but thought it was fixed in newer versions. I have tried changing the dimtfillclr to 255 as suggested on other posts, but this did not work for us. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[pendean]

So does that mean, if you turn line merge off as a test, the problem goes away?

[brendashearon]

yes, if I turn lines merge to lines overwrite, it plots correctly without the lines. We do a lot of hatch patterns and shading so we like to have lines merge on so the drawing order is not messed up when we plot.

[pendean]

I can reproduce your problem in 2014: so the folks at Acroplot seem to have it correctly identified.

DRAWORDER still works if you need to fix the source of the problem: and if you installed Express Tools, CDORDER works fine too if you need more control.

[brendashearon]

So, you are agreeing it seems to be a bug in autocad? I'm surprised there are not more people having this problem. So, there is not a solution other than turning lines merge to lines overwrite and going into every sheet before plotting and fixing the drawing order? Wish autocad would release a subscription update to fix this problem.

[bryce.thelin]

There is an issue with lines merge in AutoCAD 2014 that is being investigated. If the problem critically affects your workflow, I would suggested reverting to AutoCAD 2013 or 2012 for the time being. Alternatively, you could have both versions on your system and do your work in 2014 but use the older version for doing lines merge plotting.

[brendashearon]

It plots the lines from autocad to plotter very faint, but when I create pdf files - the lines are darker and more visible. It does it in Autocad 2014 and Autocad 2013, no difference. It just doesn’t like background mask. I have not any other problems with line merge until I changed the background color on my dimension style to background.

[petrocat]

I'm wondering if this bug has ever been fixed? I have all the latest updates for 2014 and I still get that ghost line appearing when background masks are used for mleaders. Did they fix it for 2015? We, like you, need to use lines merge so this is an annoying issue for which we often get comments from review agencies and clients.

[brendashearon]

Still having the same problem in Autocad 15. I took the background mask off our dimensions, but it still shows lines on MTEXT sometimes.

Brenda Shearon

K&S Engineering, PLLC
P.O. Box 3033
124 Hillcrest Drive
Clarksville, TN 37043
931-647-5542 - Phone
931-553-8727 - Fax
www.ksengr.com

[kmohs]

I too have seen this - it appears to be corrected if the line space factor is set to 1.

[brendashearon]

Our linetype scale is set to 1 and we still had the problem. I gave up and got rid of the background mask on our dimensions and just trim the lines around text each time.