ICAD ghosts
I have reported this issue back in June directly to BricsCAD support. Due to its occassional occurrence I did not feel it too urgent. But recently more users complain about it so I would like to draw more attention to it and have it confirmed from other users if possible. I print an R/C drawing to HP DesignJet 750C+ using HP driver v4.61 (recently downloaded from HP). In the drawing and print preview, everything is OK. But on paper, some odd parts of dimension arrows appear. To demonstrate this, I attach both the dwg file and a scan of a small part of the plot. I can reproduce the problem on my computer only, right now I printed it properly from a colleague's PC.To be honest, I have seen this problem on 3.0.0003 on another colleague's PC (Win98) by April 2003. I tried his drawing on my PC but it was OK. I did not report it as it seemed too strange. Now it happened on my drawing, too.The plotted arrows seem to be some remains of arrows which I used while drawing. I have moved them to another location but there seems to be something left behind them - but invisible in ICAD. I'm quite sure the problem is not in plotter driver - it occurred on different versions of Windows (I have W2K SP3). The drivers used are different for the machines tested (W98/W2K) and it prints correctly on a different machine. Could this be something with ICAD temporary files or virtual memory allocation?Another example is in the attached drawing "ICADghosts2.dwg" and a scanned PDF file "ICADghosts2.pdf" with marked ghosts.It may be quite difficult to reproduce the error on a different PC. I have noticed that opening such a drawing on another PC sometimes clears the ghosts, especially when the drawing was not edited on the PC before. I know it may all sound very strange but it really happens.Also note that the ghosts appear in the "Preview" of the "Open drawing" dialog - on both attached dwg files you should see it.As I mentioned, the problem turns to be ever more serious. People often end up with a completely useless large sheet of paper due to this error. What's even worse, we don't have a clear procedure to avoid it. If any more detailed description is needed, just let me know.All the mentioned files can be found in http://www.pontex.cz/download/icad/ICADghosts.zipRegardsVaclav
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I have to confirm this problem, it appeared also on my computer (ICAD 4.1.0007 Beta), but only in ICADGHOST2.DWG. Printed ghosts appeared on different positions than Vaclavs PDF shows and only several of them appeared. Several ghosts were red and several green, so they are not rest of older dimensions only. All ghosts were displayed by dotted line. Unfortunately this problem has appeared only once. I have printed the drawing and I can see ghosts on the paper, but they dont appear again. I will test it more.
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Yes, the occurrence seems rather random - that's why I was reluctant to report it at first. I'm glad to have it confirmed by others. It appears on both English Pro versions and Classic Czech versions, BTW.Can you see the ghosts in the preview of Open dialog? There they seem to appear more consistently.This error is probably rather difficult to debug/invoke but starts to have increasing priority in my eyes now, making designer's life quite frustrating. Any suggestions from the dev people? Thanks in advance.RegardsVaclav
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From paper space IntelliCAD always prints some entities which have been drawn in model space (I have found filled areas, truetype fonts, polylines with nonzero width), even if they lie outside the placed viewports. These entities could appear as your ghosts. Try to suppress the filling, the ghosts disappear from the preview of Open Drawing dialog box and printed drawings will be clear (but filling doesnt influence truetype fonts). This problem appears only when printing from Print or Print Preview dialog boxes. If you use icon Print from Standard toolbar, ghosts will not be printed. I have tested HP DeskJet and LaserJet printers only.
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Yes, not only the arrows appear as ghosts in our plots, unfortunately. I have seen also some other blocks and also an inserted raster object (created with "Paste special" in model space).The suggestion "If you use icon Print from Standard toolbar, ghosts will not be printed." sounds like black magic, but I will certainly give it a try :-) I would expect the Ctrl-P keypress, Print menu command, PLOT command and the click on Print button to point to the same event handler. Well, maybe it's not the case?I must say it turns out to be very annoying feature, indeed. People keep coming with wasted paper, moreover sometimes the 'ghosts' can be overlooked in the final print, get copied and sent to our clients - not an attractive scenario... Could the developers pay some attention to this error and confirm it and/or predict when a fix could appear, please? RegardsVaclav
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One could say "black magic works!" - I can confirm that printing through the Print button removed the ghosts from my recent plot. It invokes the QPRINT command, not the Print dialog however, and I still need to set various options before the print takes place in the print dialog... Any suggestions on how to combine the Print dialog with QPRINT command? And, above all, is there anybody out there who prints his drawings :-)? The problem appears on plotters AND printers so it should happen to many users worldwide?Regards,Vaclav
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We can reproduce the ghosts problem with the brxbmp output to bitmap. We're fixing that now.regards, sander
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Hello Sander,sounds very good, thanks. Good to see the wider response from BricsCAD again.RegardsVaclav
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Tested the problem on 4.1.0016. So far, it seems to be corrected. Due to the random behaviour of the problem, I'll report later after more tests are done. If corrected, this seems to be the main improvement in 4.1.0016. Thanks a lot.RegardsVaclavNB: In the "What's new" list, you write "Bugfixes: · Fixed print problem with ghost entities on Windows 98 and ME." I think (for sure) the problems were under W2k as well...
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Tested the problem on 4.1.0016. So far, it seems to be corrected. Due to the random behaviour of the problem, I'll report later after more tests are done. If corrected, this seems to be the main improvement in 4.1.0016. Thanks a lot.RegardsVaclavNB: In the "What's new" list, you write "Bugfixes: · Fixed print problem with ghost entities on Windows 98 and ME." I think (for sure) the problems were under W2k as well...
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Acknowledged. The issue is still open. We could reproduce some problems, and fixed them. But the case you reported is not fixed.sander, bricscad
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