Creating opaque entities

I am struggling with something that I think must be simple. I want to draw a number of components (e.g. electrical terminals) from groups of entities and arrange them above other groups, such as a DIN rail bar, such that the terminals obscure any underlying parts of the DIN rail below - this helps with laying out electrical cabinets. If I have a background colour in the model space which is black and then use a solid black hatch to fill entities, it looks ok on the screen, but when I print it the filled entities print as solid black. Should I select a white background and fill my entities with white, or is there an altogether better way of achieving what I want?Any help appreciated.

Comments

  • I think you can get the result you want by setting the color of the solid hatch in the "True Color" tab of the Select Color palette as Red=255, Green=255, Blue=255.In Autocad you do it with a wipeout, but I don't think BricsCad can create a wipeout yet. However, it can display and re-shape a wipe-out that's already in a file, and it can paste a wipeout from one file to another. So you just need to get a DWG file that has a wipeout with the right number of vertices, and use that.

  • Thanks Anthony. I was wondering whether I could configure plot styles so that if I filled an entity with black, I could set the plot style so it would print white (i.e. would appear blank). I've tried doing this but didn't have any luck. Is this possible?

  • Theoretically, you should be able to map screen color 7 to print color RGB-255,255,255, since the Plot Style Table Editor also has a "True Color" palette. But, as you said, it doesn't seem to work. The substitution isn't made. Maybe it's a bug, or maybe the True Color palette there hasn't been implemented yet.Would the wipeout option work for you? It does what you want automatically. It's invisible on screen no matter what the background color, but it hides everything behind it; and it does the same on the print.

  • Yes, the wipeout feature would work, but I'd have to buy AutoCAD which I didn't want to do. I am currently evaluating Intellicad based alternatives and I quite like Bricscad. If anyone knows when wipeouts might be added to Bricscad I'd be interested to know. I have seen some workaround solutions on the forum, but I'd want native support for this.Thanks for your assistance.

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