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[Archived] AskInga Wiki Printing grayscale to a laser printer
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    Printing grayscale to a laser printer

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    Original Article Date: Nov 4, 2002

    To plot screens to a laser printer in MicroStation V7, the printer must have PostScript capability. Read along as our resident helps you modify a pentable.
    Updated 2002-11-04 to include a suggestion for dealing with opaqueness.

    To plot screens to a laser printer, the printer must have PostScript capability. Make a copy of the PSCRIPTC.PLT file as a backup. Open the PSCRIPTC.PLT configuration file with an ASCII text editor and add the following pen statements to control the screening (grayscaling).

    *IMPORTANT* Make sure that the "change_pen=" statement in PSCRIPTC.PLT is set to "color" or "both". Add the following PEN lines are present anywhere after the "change_pen=" statement:

    PEN(n)=(a-b)/RGB=(x,y,z)

    Where "n" is the pen number
    "a-b" is a single element color or a range of element colors
    "x,y,z" are the Red Green Blue values

    To control the degree of lightness of screen (grayscale), use these values after the "RGB=" statement inside the parentheses:

    For Use
    10% screen - (233,233,233)
    20% screen - (204,204,204)
    30% screen - (178,178,178)
    40% screen - (153,153,153)
    50% screen - (127,127,127)
    60% screen - (102,102,102)
    70% screen - (77,77,77)
    80% screen - (26,26,26)
    BLACK - (0,0,0)

    The following is an example pen statement that will set color 0 to a 30% screen:

    (The color "0" you see on the monitor will be 30% grayscale on the printout.)

    PEN(1)=(0)/RGB=(178,178,178)

    The following example will map colors 0 through 8 to black and colors 9 through 16 to a 40% screen:

    PEN(1)=(0-8)/RGB=(0,0,0)
    PEN(2)=(9-16)/RGB=(153,153,153)

    Note: The Pen number to the left of the equal sign, in parentheses, should not be set lower than 1. Even though some printers/plotters have a pen 0 on their palette, MicroStation will not recognize this and reject their plot configuration file.

    Save this file under a new name with the PLT extension. In MicroStation under File > Print/Plot > Setup > Drivers, choose your new file name. You can continue to plot normally.

    2002-11-04(Update)

    Brent James offers this tidbit of information: One scale of gray that I find most useful is 0%(white) using the following statement: pen(200)=(200)/RGB=(254,254,254). When placing an opaque shape with CO=200 between text elements and an aerial photo, this setting whitewashes the background under the text thus making it more readable.

    AskInga Article #22

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    • CTennyson Created by Bentley Colleague CTennyson
    • When: Tue, May 27 2008 10:35 AM
    • Inga Morozoff Last revision by Bentley Colleague Inga Morozoff
    • When: Mon, Jun 14 2010 11:57 AM
    • Revisions: 5
    • Comments: 0
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