Printing grey vs thin lines

[redmonki]

This is probably too easy.
I'm trying to work out how to print dark gray lines, ie hatch's, as dark gray and not thin solid lines.
I do not want to print in grayscale mode.
What am I missing?

[mdradvies]

Nothing. Printing in black and white usually means the lines come out in black and white. That's why we have the grayscale option...

Why not use it though?

[redmonki]

I don't want to use gray scale because my project is using phases which is setting the existing and new work to cyan and magenta respectively. When I print in grayscale mode the colour line lose their graphical hierarchy, colour lines which are important become fuffy light grey and the dark gray lines which are non important hatches come out.... well dark grey.
I was hoping to set gray hatches as a gray scale within the black line print setting. This would allow a further hierarchy to the line weights.
This is especially noticeable at reduced A3 and A4 drawings where there is a lot of line work going on.

[mdradvies]

Sounds reasonable. But sorry, cannot be done to my knowledge. Maybe someone else has a need trick?

[redmonki]

Fair enough. Cheers.

[mdradvies]

Maybe you can try this:
Create duplicate plot views in which you override the view settings using a separate template. Turn all the phase colors into black lines and then you can use the grayscale printing.

Works especially well when the colored lines are only ment as a modelling aid.

[Munkholm]

You should also be able to control the hatch (pattern) colors, depending of what kind of objects you´re trying to change.

• If it´s wall patterns, you can use a override in VG. (You could even use a filter to apply these overrides)
• If it´s a region, you can control the pattern color from the Type Properties.

[redmonki]

I need to change surface patterns on elements such as floors and roofs. Changing the hatch to a darker or lighter gray is fine, but getting it to print as a gray scale doesn't seem possible within the black lines settings unless you pull a tricky maneuver such as Mdradives suggested.

[Munkholm]

OK, I´m not getting this at all... why not just print in "color" then, and forget about "black lines" and "greyscale" - What am I missing here...

[mdradvies]

OK, I´m not getting this at all... why not just print in "color" then, and forget about "black lines" and "greyscale" - What am I missing here...

I'm guessing that would be because of the fancy cyan and magenta linestyles in the Phasing. In Holland we have a term for that: Teletubbiedrawing...