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[solved] Output too faint -- line weight has no effect

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 3:25 am
by gwood
Using QCAD version 3.0 (Jul 20, 2012) (Full Version)
QT Version 4.74
Teigha Version 3.05.0.0

on Mint 13.

All lines display the same thickness, regardless of assigned line weight.

When printing, or exporting to PDF, all lines are so faint they can barely be seen.

I've tried setting line weight to 2.0 mm and get exactly the same output.

Re: Output too faint -- line weight has no effect

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:19 am
by Clive
Hi
Is it possible for you to post an example file here on the forum for testing?

Re: Output too faint -- line weight has no effect

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:36 am
by gwood
Pursuant to your request, I'm attaching both the .dxf, and the resulting .pdf.

All lines-weights in the "Border" layer are set to 2.0mm, yet they appear as thin lines. The "tract-lines" layer has line-weight set to 1.0mm, and as you can see they are barely visible. The other layers have more reasonable line-weights, at around 0.25mm. The 0.25mm setting was my most common in Qcad 2.

I often put an aerial photo in the background of these drawings. In Qcad 2, I could get sharp, crisp lines on top of the aerial photo. In Qcad3, I cannot even see my lines over the top of the photo.

Any help is much appreciated. I love the tiled printing feature in Qcad 3, but the program has been of little use to me so far, because of this problem.

Re: Output too faint -- line weight has no effect

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 12:46 pm
by Clive
OK, Try:

1. Main menu > Edit > Application Preferences > and set drawing unit to Foot and paper unit to inch.

2. Now go to > Main menu > Edit > Drawing preferences > and set the same as above.

3. Still in Drawing preferences > set the scale you need.
scale setting.png
scale setting.png (11.46 KiB) Viewed 10707 times
Your file works for me after setting the appropriate scale for the 'current' drawing (in Drawing preferences) with correct line weights showing in PDF/print out..

Re: Output too faint -- line weight has no effect

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 8:46 pm
by gwood
Clive,

Your instructions helped me fix my problem. Thank you.

I should note a few things which might be helpful to others:

My configuration was set by default, to Drawing Unit: Foot, Paper Unit: Foot. I made the change to Paper Unit: Inch, as you suggested.

In Printing, you instructed I set my Viewport Scale to 1/4096" = 1'-0". The Viewport Scale changes whenever "Fit Drawing to Paper" is selected, so this didn't work for me. However the suggestion was helpful in that it led me to notice the line weight changed according to scale. This isn't the desired behavior, so I checked my Paper Size.

I had previously notice the default for Paper Size was "Custom", and I had changed it to Letter. The change had not stuck, so I changed it again. This time, the line weights behaved as expected.

Thank you again for your help. You may mark this thread SOLVED.