TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

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littlelion
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TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by littlelion »

Hi all,

today I encountered following problem: when printing a drawing from the TechDraw workbench the projected parts (drawn with PartDesign) are so faint, they are almost inivisible.

The printout looks like this (print to PDF, same is true for printout on paper):
Screenshot from 2022-02-18 15-47-45.png
Screenshot from 2022-02-18 15-47-45.png (41.62 KiB) Viewed 3375 times
in FreeCad everything looks ok:
Screenshot from 2022-02-18 15-35-47.png
Screenshot from 2022-02-18 15-35-47.png (214.16 KiB) Viewed 3375 times
Now to the question: What could go wrong there? Is there an option to change line properties (which could have unfavorable defaults)?

System in use: the current version in the Ubuntu repository (see details below)
OS: Ubuntu 21.10 (ubuntu:GNOME/ubuntu)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.
Build type: Release
Branch: unknown
Hash: 0d9536ed3e8c7f40197b5606e1b7873625e1d6fe
Python version: 3.9.6
Qt version: 5.15.2
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.5.2
Locale: English/United States (en_US)

test.pdf
(271.96 KiB) Downloaded 79 times
test.FCStd
(28.47 KiB) Downloaded 71 times
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by wandererfan »

littlelion wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 3:02 pm today I encountered following problem: when printing a drawing from the TechDraw workbench the projected parts (drawn with PartDesign) are so faint, they are almost inivisible.
Check your line widths in the property editor?
lineWidthsProperties.png
lineWidthsProperties.png (32.44 KiB) Viewed 3333 times
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littlelion
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by littlelion »

These are exactly the present defaults. I just tried to increase them, but besides heavily bold lines of the visible parts, it doesn't seem to have any impact on the printout.

Is there maybe an option to change the line color? They seem to be very light grey, but at the same thickness as all other lines.

Btw. I found line color settings for the visible parts of the drawing, but not for the projections.
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Shalmeneser
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by Shalmeneser »

* Techdraw page of your file
* File > Export to PDF
* PDF below : NO problem

Code: Select all

OS: Windows 10 (10.0)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.27518 (Git)
Build type: Release
Python version: 3.8.12
Qt version: 5.12.9
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.5.3
Locale: French/France (fr_FR)
Attachments
Capture d’écran 2022-02-18 201453.png
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by wandererfan »

littlelion wrote: Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:10 pm Btw. I found line color settings for the visible parts of the drawing, but not for the projections.
You could look at Edit>Preferences>TechDraw>Colors and the setting for "Normal", but there are no special setting for print colors.

I also get good results on paper and PDF.

Did you try "Export PDF" from the RMB? I'm not sure if it uses a different PDF writer from the system "print to PDF" option, but I guess it is worth a try.
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littlelion
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by littlelion »

Unfortunately, the result is still the same when using export to pdf. Besides that, the setting for "Normal" color is already black and it is marked as default.

At least I've found a workaround:
Right click -> export to SVG and then print it with Inkscape.
Even if its tedious, its the way to go in the short term.

I'll try with the newest Appimage (which should be 0.19.3 if I remember correctly), but this could take a while. Currently I've got no GB to spare for the download.
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littlelion
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by littlelion »

With the appimage, i downloaded today, it works (0.19.3). So, its a problem with the current version in the Ubuntu 21.10 repository.

Unfortunately, both versions seem to corrupt the exported svg files of some techdraw sheets. I didn't find out what triggers that issue, because I've created many files of the same kind - a quite simple part like the example in this thread with a TechDraw sheet containing 2 or 3 projections and some measurements. Some of the exported svg are flawless and some others are corrupted, so that its impossible to open them with various programs.
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wandererfan
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by wandererfan »

littlelion wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 7:14 pm Unfortunately, both versions seem to corrupt the exported svg files of some techdraw sheets. I didn't find out what triggers that issue, because I've created many files of the same kind - a quite simple part like the example in this thread with a TechDraw sheet containing 2 or 3 projections and some measurements. Some of the exported svg are flawless and some others are corrupted, so that its impossible to open them with various programs.
Can you provide a sample of an svg file that doesn't work? The fcstd file would be nice too.
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littlelion
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by littlelion »

No need to discuss the SVG issue here, because its already reported here:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 4&p=538131

seems to be an issue with an encoder library, because the same error happens with any program on my system while trying to open a SVG file.

edit:
declaring the missing namespaces in the SVG header almost solves the problem.
Just add the following declarations to the svg tag:
xmlns:sodipodi="http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/DTD/sodipodi-0.dtd"
xmlns:inkscape="http://www.inkscape.org/namespaces/inkscape"


Inkscape still crashes, but that's a different story.

edit 2:
Can somebody confirm the missing declarations in SVG exports as a bug of FreeCAD (TechDraw)? Or is it maybe related to a piece of 3rd party software?

edit 3:
The reason, why Inkscape crashes is reported here:
https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/2843
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mfraz74
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Re: TechDraw printouts - almost invisible projections

Post by mfraz74 »

littlelion wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 7:14 pm With the appimage, i downloaded today, it works (0.19.3). So, its a problem with the current version in the Ubuntu 21.10 repository.

Unfortunately, both versions seem to corrupt the exported svg files of some techdraw sheets. I didn't find out what triggers that issue, because I've created many files of the same kind - a quite simple part like the example in this thread with a TechDraw sheet containing 2 or 3 projections and some measurements. Some of the exported svg are flawless and some others are corrupted, so that its impossible to open them with various programs.
I've been trying to sort this for a while and so far exporting as SVG and printing from Inkscape is the only thing that works.

I'm using 0.20 from the PPA.
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