Screening; Display Mgr vs Layer Transparency

[BBP-Arch]

ACA 2016

So, the goal is to create what we old geezers used to call a 'background' of a floor plan...basically a floor plan that is at least 50% screened/faded.

I'd discovered the 'Screened' Display. One click and MOST of the things on screen turn dark gray and print lightly. However, it ONLY screens Objects...walls, windows, doors, stairs, railings, etc. However, it won't affect blocks...whether Autocad's native blocks (like plumbing fixtures, washer, dryer, etc) or blocks I create. It also won't affect entities, e.g. lines, circles, etc. Having been frustrated by this, I went down the path of transparency.

I go into a View and then into the Layer Manager and select the floor plan construct xref'd into the drawing. I go through and select all the layers I want and change they're transparency to whatever I want...50% let's say.  But, I ALSO have to remember (or more specifically have staff remember) to click the 'Transparency' button in the Plot Dialog Box...this gets forgotten more than you know, and I've seen the transparency button create font printing issues and other anomalies.

So I'm looking for guidance to the best way to achieve getting a 'screened' floor plan background. Am I doing this the way any of you are? Is there another way? I'd prefer to use the Display Manager, but I'm not sure it will allow me to affect entities other than native Architectural Objects.

Thanks,

Scott

[David_W_Koch]

We use named plot styles, and have a style called Screened Black, that has the Color set to Black and the Screening set to 40, although you can use whatever percentage works for you.  Plots gray to PDF; on our large format laser printers, plots black with a dot screen, effectively looking gray.

That plot style gets used in some of our Display Settings (such as the "screened" Display Representations) as well as assigned to layers.  We try to keep most things "ByLayer", so that others can have layer-level control over how things plot.  Our engineers take the architectural background and apply the Screened Black pen to make it "fade" into the background, allowing their work to be seen more clearly.  The architects use it for existing-to-remain items in renovation projects.

We occasionally run across problems where an AEC object will have a hard-coded plot style and not show up screened for the engineers, but we have tried to weed those out of the Display Representations used by the engineers.

[David_W_Koch]

PS:  If you really want Multi-View Blocks to show up screened for "screened" Display Configurations, you can duplicate the Plan Display Representation and call the copy Plan Screened and use that instead of Plan for the Plan Screened Display Representation Set.

Then you have to create a view block for each Multi-View Block (perhaps a renamed copy of the one used for the Plan Display Representation) and assign that to the Plan Screened Display Representation.  In that view block, the linework has to be set up to plot screened.  In my office, that would likely be done by assigning the Screened Black plot style, but you can set it up however you want to assure that it plots "screened".