Line Thickness in printing ProE Drawings 1

[peglor]

Is there a setting you can use to adjust the thickness of the lines in printed drawings from ProE?

I've got a few drawings missing out on fine detail because the visible lines are so thick they obscure smaller details.

The printer can print much thinner lines than ProE is using (It's a LASER printer), and hidden lines on the drawing are about as thick as I'd like all the lines to be.

Where can I find these settings? All help appreciated.

 

[helpmewithintralink]

You have alter your pen file or change the display of your "thicker lines". If these are tangent lines... then you can make them thinner by showing them dimmed or phantom instead as solid. The pen file is *.pnt. It is a text file. Read the help and see if this works for you. It did for us!

 

[peglor]

helpmewithintralink,

Many thanks for the suggestions. I've been playing with the settings for the pen thicknesses and have found settings I like, pen1 and 2 at 2 and pen3 at 1.

My config file has 8 Pen settings (ProE2001 Educational Edition). They vary from 1 to 16 (Values below 1 appear to be treated as 1, values over 16 also seem to be treated as 1 (Or possibly default)). Their functions (That I can work out) are as follows:

Pen Default Function
1 3 Edges of Solids, Dimension Arrows and leader lines [sometimes...], tangent and intersected Edges of surfaces
2 ? Edges of Surfaces
3 1 Hidden Lines
4 2 ?
5 1 ?
6 2 ?
7 ? ?
8 3 ?

There were a few test prints where leader lines for certain dimensions were heavier than the rest of the dimensions though - I'm wondering did I miss something.

Some of the changed dimensions had been edited prior to the print and were still coloured white though they weren't selected, so this might be the cause.

For some reason the dimension leader lines and arrows seem to follow pen1's settings most of the time, but on one print I did with the pen width set to 16, the leader lines stayed as they were - very strange.

I was looking for the setting to modify the text line width but couldn't find a parameter to do this. The default value according to the properties --> Text Style window is 0.85. Can the default value be changed or a new font be set up with new defaults?

How do you assign a pen to a specific line type?

 

[ohio30]

Everything that I have read thus far seems to be the way to correct the pen line weights. Here is a copy of my pen file - note: the pen table file path must be set in the plot config file (*.pcf).

!Start of pen table file
!GEOMETRY(WHITE), CURVES(BROWN), VOLUME (MAGENTA)
pen 1 thickness 0.008 in; drawing_color
!LETTER (YELLOW)
pen 2 thickness 0.002 in; letter_color
!HIDDEN (GRAY)
pen 3 thickness 0.004 in; dimmed_color; half_tone_color
!HIGHLIGHT (RED)
pen 4 thickness 0.004 in; highlite_color
!SHEET METAL (GREEN)
pen 5 thickness 0.002 in; attention_color
!SECTION (CYAN)
pen 6 thickness 0.005 in; section_color
! DIMMED MENU (GRAY)
pen 7 thickness 0.005 in; magenta_color
!EDGE HIGH (BLUE)
pen 8 thickness 0.005 in; edge_highlite_color
!end of pen table file

In the pen file listed above any line beginning with the character "!" is a comment. I have placed a comment to indicate the Pro/E color that the pen width will control.

I have created many pen table files to control line weights for all types of plotters, printers, and PDF distillers and my experience is that the actual thickness value in the table does not correspond with the actual printed line width. However, if the pen width thickness value increases all lines for that color will be printed with a heavier line than before.

I hope this helps?

 

[ohio30]

I just came across another file that is supplied with Pro/E. I had forgotten about this one.
Pro/E 2001: copy and edit the file '%proe_loadpoint%\text\intf_configs\dxf_export.pro' (replace %pro_loadpoint% with the folder path where you installed Pro/E.)

This file includes everything needed to format a DXF or DWG export file from Pro/E. I am sure you find a similar path in previous releases of Pro/E.

Have fun!