Is it possible to plot blue print in bricscad?


Hello, just have a silly question, I want to plot the drawing file to blue bg color as the lines are white, like the old blueprint, is that possible to make it in Bricscad?
Normally I will print the black-white file and make it as blueprint in photoshop or gimp.

I have tried to put a blue solid hatch in the paper space and set the line to 255 color, but I finally get blue-black pdf file.

Is there any solution to Bricscad? I attach an image from Bricsys's web site which shows the blue print.

Comments

  • Why not set background color to blue in options?
  • Oh, plot to blue. Make a pen table where all is almost white. Or use true color almost white for your layers. Blue hatch is good for behind.
  • @Sitian Xiang said:
    I have tried to put a blue solid hatch in the paper space and set the line to 255 color, but I finally get blue-black pdf file.

    I do a lot of printing in color, and the PDF colors always match the Bricscad colors exactly. See the attachment for a screenshot of my Bricscad window and an Acrobat window with the resulting PDF file.

    I used RGB:14,65,120 to try to match the color in the image file you posted. You can see a little bit of that image and the forum page in the gap between the Acrobat and Bricscad windows.

    When I used to print from the less user-friendly and much more expensive DWG cad software, the PDF colors were always very different than in the cad file. I use Bricscad v17. Maybe they've changed it since then to make Bricscad's color-matching performance compatible with the market leader? If so, you'll have to lighten the blue in the cad file till it comes out right in the PDF. That's what I used to do when I worked in that other cad program.

    I don't know whether the PDF printer makes any difference, but I use PDF Creator.

    Just curious -- how many square meters of print do you get out of a blue cartridge?

  • Why not just say Autocad? IMO it's a compliment to Bricscad to say its competing. I get if someone is sliming bricscad with vague comments, but anything specifically technical is of value to the bricscad team. In fact, the Autodesk forums answer many questions that this forum does not so the two are tangled from the start. I'm going to start calling it VOLDEMORT CAD :)

  • Just curious -- how many square meters of print do you get out of a blue cartridge?

    It might sound silly, but printing a very light grey onto blue paper isn't impossible, not only would it save on ink but it would be an awful lot quicker. Plus give you a very consistent blue color.

  • @Steven_g said:
    ... printing a very light grey onto blue paper isn't impossible....

    Wouldn't that give just a slightly darker blue? Normally, grey means a few black pixels mixed with the white of the paper.

    There's white ink and toner, but I think it's very expensive.

    After writing my initial question about the quantity of blue ink needed, it occurred to me that the OP might not intend to make hard copy.

  • I have never seen an old-fashioned blueprint in person. But, I think the blue is darker than just pure blue ink. Also, the white lines are probably actually a pale blue.

    I am not clear if you are wanting an image for a catalog,, or web page, or rather want to do a large paper print.

    For making a true paper blueprint, I don't think that ink-jet printing onto blue paper would work. After all, printing "white" with ink, just means no ink on that area. Rather, there are specialized printers that use pigments. And these can do things like metallic gold. So, I assume white pigment is available. I suspect a sign-making shop would have the right equipment to do this.

    -Joe

  • Part of the responsibilities (more likely he's the kid make him do it) in my first couple of jobs was the printing of drawings using ammonia similar process to blueprints, you draw on tracing paper then printing involved a photosensitive paper, in our case a light yellow, the tracing paper is carefully placed ontop of the yellow paper and fed through rollers into a machine that used lights to 'activate' the print, just leaving yellow lines and then ammonia fumes to 'fix' the printing which produced blue lines on white paper.

  • @Joe Dunfee said:
    ..... But, I think the blue is darker than just pure blue ink. Also, the white lines are probably actually a pale blue. .....

    The blue in the image the OP posted is very much like real blueprints. Thin lines tended to be a little bluish, because the edges of lines were sometimes fuzzy, but thick lines could be quite white at their centers. Blueprints were made by shining UV light through a drawing on tracing paper, onto a photo-sensitive coating that would turn blue when exposed to UV light. Then the unconverted coating was washed off, leaving blank paper wherever lines had blocked the light. Pencil lines don't block light as well as ink lines, so a blueprint made from a pencil drawing might be more prone to have fuzzy or bluish lines.

  • I did blue-line copies, as you described, early in my career as well. Looking up the topic on Youtube brought up this interesting video, where the guy makes the chemicals to treat paper so that he can create his own cyanotype blueprints.

    -Joe

  • I have searched for a way to make nice blueprints too. Did not find a way to do this within Bricscad.
    My workaround was to install and use the GIMP image editor https://www.gimp.org/
    There are some tutorials on youtube which explain how to convert your drawing into a blueprint.

  • I'm sorry. I just saw that you already used the GIMP editor.

  • Or you can get some blue paper, and use an AxiDraw with white paint pen to do the lines.
    Or we can make parchment from animal skins, and put a charcoal pencil in the AxiDraw.
    We actually have one, its very entertaining to watch.
    I need to write a decent dwg to SVG converter though. I already did that for kmx which is also xml so I just need to switch to svg schema.
    Maybe our company will sell tools someday, I need to get on that.

  • FYI: The _Export command can create an SVG.

  • oh, a bricscad only goodie!
    I'll have to test it but add it to the list of things NOT in otherCAD

  • I just checked out the "Axidraw" plotter. It is reminiscent of a portable pen plotter that was available in the 1990's, I think. Though the one from the 90's was capable of D-sized prints. It differed in that the pen traveled on an arm, so the amount of mass needing to move was reduced. The $500 Axidraw one seems to be somewhat overpriced for something that can only do A3 (less than Tabloid) size. It has been a while, but I used to see old, used flat-bed plotters that could use Tabloid, and cost under $100. I think they were on serial ports. Though, I don't know if they used standard HPGL language, which you can still use today.

    Though, the idea of doing real blue-prints using the chemical process is something I would like to do someday. Does anyone sell the basic chemicals, or pre-treated paper?

  • @Joe Dunfee said:
    .... the idea of doing real blue-prints using the chemical process is something I would like to do someday. Does anyone sell the basic chemicals, or pre-treated paper?

    Probably not the pre-treated paper; the blue-line diazo process made cyanotype blueprints obsolete. You can still get diazo paper pretty easily though. And it looks like the chemicals for cyanotype printing are readily available -- even from Walmart.

    Instructions at https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-make-blueprint-paper-606176 or https://www.freestylephoto.biz/alternative-process/cyanotype. I've never done it, but it sounds pretty simple.

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