Printing with black background

[CALCAD]

Contrarian that I am, I want a black background. The model prints OK, but when I set the dimension color to white, the dimensions don't print at all. My current workaround is to set the dimension color to red which will print, but the resulting text is slightly fuzzy. Is there a way to get white text to print?

[Strix]

if it's anything like AutoCAD (which it probably isn't) you'll need to set the pen colours or something

 

is it REALLY not 'printing' the white, or is the black ink bleeding over where the dims should be? try printing in an economy mode to check

[CALCAD]

Strix,

Sorry I didn't make the situation clear. I use a black background on screen, but the printer driver reverses the black to white background for printing, to save ink or toner. I only use a laser printer to get black line images. In SketchUp, I can set the dimension colors individually or globally, but if they are set to white, they don't print at all. It's inconsistent in that the model displays a hidden line wireframe in white and prints black on white but the white dimensions do not.

[Strix]

ah - that makes far more sense!

I can stop thinking you're odd now

 

I'm afraid I don't know the answer, but you may be able to 'work around' it if you can set the dim lines to a very pale grey instead of white

 

PS - in AutoCAD I'm pretty certain there's true white and black/white - is this what's causing the problem in this case?

[f700es]

So you set your background to black in the styles manager? Why not just export your model to a raster image (jpg or other) and then print the raster image? See if this works.

Good luck

[CALCAD]

f700es, thanks for the suggestion. That does work. I can get good results if I export either TIF or JPEG, then open in Paint, invert the colors, set up the page and print. It's a bit of trouble compared to printing right out of SketchUp but it works. Thanks.

[f700es]

f700es, thanks for the suggestion. That does work. I can get good results if I export either TIF or JPEG, then open in Paint, invert the colors, set up the page and print. It's a bit of trouble compared to printing right out of SketchUp but it works. Thanks.

 

Forget MS Paint my friend. Go get Paint.net

http://www.getpaint.net/

It's like a Photoshop Lite, the best paint program on the planet and it's free!

Glad the suggestion is working for you.

[CALCAD]

f700es, thanks for the link. Just looked at paint.net. Pretty fancy for a free program. I don't do much with bit maps, but I did notice that paint.NET has a much nicer UI than the GIMP. I'll have to play with it more.

 

To Strix, I've tried a lot of different colors and shades of grey, but so far the best compromise is bright red for the dimension color. I think I'll use the bit map export method because the white dimension color is more readable for me than the red.

[DavidThen]

Dear Friends.... i was reading your posts.... What I do is draw a rectangle and hatch it solid with a very dark gray... but just now i realized you can choose a true color, which is good, now i choose a pitch black, now it comes out exactly how i want it to print with a black background, u can normal print, pdf wat ev.... Sincerly David Piña From Dominican Republic

[DavidThen]

I use AC 2009 and after you draw the rectangle and hatch it solid... u must send it to the back... and put it under your plans/layouts...