Copied Hatch Plots Differently

[Anonymous]

Hi,

When I plot hatches, they appear differently, though they have identical properties (with the exception of area (shape)). To ensure they're identical, I've copied one hatch across an entire drawing, stretching its vertexes to make each copy fit in its context. Still, the original plots darker and the copies plot lighter. What gives?

Answers/Empathy appreciated.

Thanks,
Dougal

[maxim_k]

Hi Dougal,

Hard to say without having the drawing at hand.
Can you attach the drawing (or part of it) here?

[Anonymous]

Hi Maxim,

Thanks for the reply. Because I would rather not publicly disclose these files in their entirety, I tried to recreate the problem. To my slight embarrassment, I was unable to reproduce the problem as I was preparing parallel files for this thread... Copying the part of the drawing I screen-captured earlier to a new drawing and then plotting it in a duplicated referencing (plotting) file produced the identical hatches for which I had hoped originally.

Referencing the entire original plan in a duplicated (stripped down) plot file also plots fine, which leads me to believe there's some funny translation between the plan and the original plot file.

I'm not sure where to go from here, but it's more of a back-burner curiosity/annoyance than an urgent necessity. I'll keep tinkering unless you see any red flags in my ramblings. Apologies for the convoluted mess of a post, by the way.

[maxim_k]

>>>>>Because I would rather not publicly disclose these files in their entirety,
Can you at least attach the resulting PDF you get from original drawing? You can "print" to PDF only part of the drawing which you showed on screenshot.

[pendean]

Perhaps that file needs to be fixed https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/AutoCA...

[Anonymous]

Re: pendean, I'll start working through the corrupted file troubleshooting; you may be right. In the meantime, I've stripped down three duplicate files that produce the different hatches I'm talking about. A2 references CN which references PP. I think I was unable to reproduce the problem before because I directly referenced PP in A2; when I did that the hatches printed fine. Is this a nested xref problem?

Ultimately I'd like to plot in the ARCH E paper space on A2 and have the hatches from PP be consistent across the drawing.

[maxim_k]

Hi Dougal,

You forgot to attach scc.ctb plot style table file (you need to compress it (ZIP) before attaching).
With monochrome.ctb I'm unable to reproduce the issue with hatches on my side.

[Anonymous]

Oh. Right. See attached.

[maxim_k]

I attached the result on my side.

It looks good. Isn't it?

[Anonymous]

This is what I get when I open A2_00 copy and plot it on ARCH E.

[maxim_k]

Do you want the hatch to appear only in this area?

[Anonymous]

I want these three areas to have the same hatch.

The areas on the top and left have a very light hatch and the one in the bottom right has darker hatch. In PP_02 copy, all these areas have the same properties, but when I plot in A2_00 copy, the discrepancy reveals itself. I've included a screenshot of the bottom left area to give you an idea of just how light that hatch is, though the actual quality of the final hatch (light or dark) matters less to me than the incongruence between them.

[maxim_k]

Have you seen my PDF from this post:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-for-mac-forum/copied-hatch-plots-differently/m-p/8933327#M356...
Is it OK for you? I got this result on my side.
I ask you again - please attach your PDF file (not a screenshot), I want to look at it closer.
BTW, which AutoCAD version do you have and what printer are you using to produce PDF?

[Anonymous]

Yeah, your pdf is exactly what I want... I don't know why mine keeps plotting differently. I'm using AutoCAD 2018.2 for Mac. I use the DWG to PDF.pc3 option to plot.

[maxim_k · Accepted solution]

Change "DWG to PDF.pc3" printer to "AutoCAD PDF (General documentation).pc3" in Page Setup and test saving to PDF.
Do you see the difference?

[Anonymous]

That did the trick. Thanks so much for your patience!

[maxim_k]

BTW, I tried to save your drawing to PDF in 2019 and in 2020 versions of AutoCAD for Mac and got correct results even with "DWG to PDF.pc3" printer, so looks like there is something wrong in AC 2018.