Wipeouts Printing Black on Hardcopies, not PDF

[bcollins]

I have a drawing with wipeouts.  I can print it from one machine and everything prints exactly the way you'd expect.  I print it from another machine and all the wipeouts are printed as black blocks.  I tried printing another drawing from the "messed up" machine and get the same results.  So I'm pretty sure we're dealing with a computer settings issue and not a drawing specific issue.  I know this has been an issue in the past when printing to PDF, but I've never seen it when trying to print a hard copy.

[Anonymous]

We had this problem for a while with Civil 3D 2010 and older versions of Acrobat/Reader. Make sure your PDF program is up to date. If you can't get an upgrade, try printing from a free reader such as FoxIt.

[bcollins]

The problem we're having is with printing hard copies directly from AutoCAD. Not printing PDFs or hard copies of PDFs.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. Unfortunately, I do not have an answer for you.

Some things to check:

• Make sure your .pc3 has the correct settings for your printer/plotter
• Try printing to PDF first, then to the printer/plotter. (Make sure to try different PDF readers if Adobe doesn't work right away)
• If that doesn't work, try going to DWF first.
• Print hardcopy to anything else. Does the problem occur there too?

If that still doesn't work, I have two more options:

1. Replace all your wipeouts with hatches of a fully unscreened pen (Screening = 0 in the plot style table)
2. Try a newer version of Civil 3D

[ccoles]

Our solution for the PDF problem may help. We created a layer called 'C-ANNO-WIPE', set the color to 255, and put all of our wipeouts on that layer. With frames turned on or off, the underlying color is virually white and has eliminated all of our 'black box' problems.

[Anonymous]

I like that idea!

[MarySeufert]

When plotting, are you using a company pc3 or just using the installed windows printer in the printer selection? Both using the same CTB/STB file? I would guess that the problem computer isn't using the same printer settings as the 'good' computer. Perhaps modified by the user at some point in time for another purpose?

If it works on one computer and not on another, it is a settings issue. You will just have to track down what is different between the two machines.

[bcollins · Accepted solution]

We finally figured this one out... sorta.  We have a KIP plotter and in the printing preferences there's an option for "Output Format".  The two options are KIPGL and KIPScript.  If KIPGL is selected then we get all our wipeouts print as black boxes.  If KIPScript is selected then everything prints fine.

The reason I say we "sorta" figured it out is that we have no idea what those selections are doing.  We just know that the correct selection fixes the issue.

If you don't have this setting you your plotter then this thread probably isn't helping much.  But maybe your plotter will have something similar.

[irishsnake]

Another workaround to this issue is to plot using "dwg to pdf.pc3". It gives you a file without the blackouts, turned in the direction that you want to see, and layers are shown and can be modified.

[chris.cdservices]

Solved:

When I upgraded from Windows 7 pro to Windows 10, my ACAD products (ACAD 2018 and ACADLT 2014 started printing wipeouts all black on hard copies. 

Printer is a monochrome Lexmark W812.

Solved by going into Control panel to Printer devices: 

Select your printer to open

Select  "Customize your printer"

Select "Advanced"

Driver:  mine was listed as "Lexmark W812 (MS)", Pulled down the menu and selected "Lexmark W812 PS (MS)

Click "New Driver"

Click "Apply".

Printer works Tickety Boo.

I believe PS stands for Post Script and MS stands for MS, so if you can find a setting or similar driver swap it might work for someone else?

[bcollins]

This problem is rearing it's ugly head again.  We still have the same KIP plotter that we had before but the KIP Script/KIPGL selection doesn't fix the issue anymore.  But we have figured out that if you uncheck the "plot transparency" box in the plot dialog then the black boxes go away.

[johngordon6189]

Have you tried other options as plotting as an image?

[mian.ahmedSH9K6]

I have very simple solution. Create a Wipeout layer which has a RGB(255,255,255) color. Move Wipeouts to Wipeout layer. Make sure that all wipeouts color by layer.