Background Mask not Plotting to what color is suppose to be...

[colby82]

Hello, i have an odd problem that i have been 'dealing' with for a month or so.. since a picture is worth a 1000 words...

so this first pic is of my work in model space with properites shown, as u can see, the mask of the selected mtext is the same color as the hatch it is on top of..

the second pic, is what happens when i exportpdf the dwg in layout space.. the wrong color! wierd...

any help would be great. thnx!

colby

[Jay_B]

Is it possible there's a Viewport color override set for that particular layer changing the color in Layout?

[colby82]

well i dont think so... that layer is suppose to be white/black, since it is text.. and the background mask is 'part' of that white/black layer (Color_7), if i plot from model space i get the same thing. So i am assuming that it wouldn't be a VP over ride. i should meantion all the linework/info is an xref.

BUT, i just tried this, i exportpdf from the original dwg (model space).. with NO ctb file selected...and it seems like the current CTB file i am using doesnt have an option correctly selected for background masking.. or something like that.  any ideas on that?

thnx for your help.

[Jay_B]

What if you rule out the color issue completely by toggling on use drawing background color option?

[colby82 · Accepted solution]

i juts figured out what is going on.. so.. the color for that workspace (light pink) has a screening set to 40 within the CTB file, so obviously when i plot this, the background mask isnt getting the screening value of 40, its still at 100... if that makes sense. so i am assuming the easiest fix is the change my screening vaule within the CTB for that color 191 back to 100. thanks for your help Jay, 2 heads r better then one! 🙂

[Jay_B]

Your going to want your assigned background (masking color) set to a screening of 0% in ctb.

[colby82]

well my background mask color is set to be the same color as the background layer i have (color 191)... so i cant really change that color to 0, otherwise the hatch will also have the same screening applied to it. i also just tried to use a color i dont use anywhere else, set that to 0 screening in CTB, and that doesnt work either.. i am thinking of just putting all screening to 100, then it wont be a problem.

[troma]

Here's an alternate idea.  I don't know if it will work.

Change the colour of the text layer to 191.  Then you have to go into the mtext editor and change the text itself to whatever colour you need it to be to plot black.  Leave the background mask as 191.

Test this out with one piece of text and let us know!

[Jay_B]

I'm a little confused as to your goal here, but if your goal is to simply see the Mtext with nothing under it (white), then simply using the "use drawing backgound color" is easiest.

If you want the background color to match the hatch color then you'd use 191 & 191 or same colors.

The 0% screening when applied to color 255 (which is almost white) OOTB, in ctb, works well for a white color for misc. masking needs aside from whipeout or background masking. (the purple line is color 191.)

Here's 2 separate tests using the "color background" vs. "drawing background".

Drawing background.

Color 50 as background.

[troma]

I think I understand.  The goal is to mask the text over the black lines etc., but not over the hatch.  Use of the same colour for the hatch and the mask achieves this nicely: the mask blends in with the hatch.

The problem is that the ctb is applying a screening to the colour, and I think there is a glitch here.  The ctb applies the screening to the hatch, but not to the background mask, even though they are the same colour.  My approach puts the mask on the same colour as its own layer.  I'm still not sure that this will work.  I think if there was a 'ByLayer' option for the background mask it would work, but there is no such option AFAICT (I'm in 2011).

[ryan.beisaw]

Has anyone figured out a fix to this yet? Im noticing the same issue. If i have a shaded hatch and then want to use that shade as a background mask color then it appears the ctb doesnt apply to the background mask....the mask and the hatch color are set to the same color but its not working??

[AllenJessup]

This looks to be a different issue. So starting a new post might have been a better option. Anyway...

What version are you working in. What printer driver id you use to create the plot in the image or is it a screen-shot of your layout?

I'm not 100% sure of what you're trying to do. If you want to see the shading - hatch. put the masked text under the shading but above what you want to mask. I'm talking about the drawing order.

Allen

[colby1982]

i believe we were having different issues... soon after i left this post i realized that within the CTB file, the shade color i was trying to match had a screening applied to the layer within the CTB. thus causing the non color match issue when plotting. so i had to figure out what color the screening was actually plotting at. which i did with a pixel selecting program..