Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Plotting in color
Plotting the colors that you see on-screen requires no special tricks. In the absence of a
plot style table (that is, if you selected None from the drop-down list in the Plot Style
Table [Pen Assignments] area in the Plot or Page Setup dialog box), AutoCAD sends col-
or information as it appears on-screen to the plotter. As long as your output device can
plot in color, what you see should be what you get.
If you attach a plot style table to the layout that you're plotting (as described in the pre-
vious section), you can — if you really want to — map screen colors to different plotted
colors. In most cases, you don't want that kind of confusion. Instead, leave the Color
property in the plot style table set to Use Object Color.
If your goal is
not
to plot color, make sure that you set the Color property for
all plot styles to Black. If you try to plot colors on a monochrome device, you may
find that objects appear in various shades of gray, with lighter colors mapped to
lighter shades of gray and darker colors to darker shades of gray. This process of
mapping colors to shades of gray is called
dithering,
and it usually is
not
what you
want in a CAD drawing. To override it, use the Plot Style Table Editor, as described
in the section “Creating plot styles,” earlier in this chapter, to set the Color option
for all colors to Black. (The default setting is Use Object Color.) If you don't
already have a plot style table that you want to use, select
monochrome.ctb
for
color-based plot styles or select
monochrome.stb
for named plot styles — both
of which come with AutoCAD — from the drop-down list in the Plot Style Table
(Pen Assignments) area of the Plot dialog box.
To see the full range of AutoCAD colors available on your plotter, or to see
how a particular plot style table affects plotting, open and then plot the sample
file
plot_screening_and_fill_patterns.dwg
which you can download from
www.autodesk.com/autocad-samples
. The Screening 100% layout in this drawing
contains color swatches for all 255 AutoCAD colors (and this file is available to
AutoCAD LT users as well).
It's a (Page) Setup!
