Forums >> Revit Building >> Technical Support >> Material Surface pattern changes to gray with view scale

LRK4Revit

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I have surface patterns that change from black lines to dark gray lines when the view scale changes below 1/8".  Once the final plot is converted to a raster image for printing, the dark gray line comes out pixilated.  Does anyone know why Revit is changing the color of the surface pattern lines below a certain scale?

The surface patterns are user created Simple Model Patterns with lines offset at different distances. This does not seem to happen with the custom patterns.  I can’t change the scale of the view, because it won’t fit on the sheet above 3/32”-1’.

Attached are 2 screen shots zoomed in on the surface.

Here is a list of everything I tried to make the lines black.

- Make the color of the Surface Pattern black in the Materials dialogue box

- Print colors as Black Lines in print settings

- Make the color of the pattern black in Override Elements in View and Override Categories in View

- Added 3/32” scale to the Line Weights and copies the weights from 1/8”

- Changed the distance between the lines in Modify Pattern Properties

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nastyclown

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The answer is antialiasing... the line becomes so thin , that to ensure it looks more or less equal to what you have on bigger scale it puts some gray areas, or tint the line completely gray. -->from wikipedia

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LRK4Revit

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Is there any way to modify this action? 

Consequently I changed the scale to 1/16" and the gray color got lighter.

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itsmyalterego

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Have you gone to Print -- settings [setup]

change the appearance settings from grayscale to black lines.

Also try checking the box at the bottom that says "replace halftone with thin lines"

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LRK4Revit

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I tried both of those options and neither made a difference.

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itsmyalterego

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I was able to duplicate your problem. 

What is going on is that Revit will take the hatch density and approximate a gray scale.... it's assuming that due to the line spacing you've given it, and at that scale, it's going to print as a solid.  So it doesn't want that to be solid black. 

I was able to get several shades of gray, from several different hatches, at large scales.  However, with a line spacing of 2', I had to zoom out to 1/64" = 1' , whereas 8" spacings turned gray before 1/32. 

So I don't have a solution for you.  But I did notice that "thin lines" remained black.

Thin lines being the display options, not the line type. Also  This isn't a printing issue, this is how it displays on the screen.

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LRK4Revit

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The PDF's created from these views show the lines the same as shown on the screen.  I attached a PDF of the entire elevation with the enlarged area from previous attachements circled.  If you zoom in far enough you can see the gray lines next to black lines.

This is a printing issue because we print to KIP plotters which only print in black/white.  When something is gray it rasterizes the color into black and white pixels.  The gray prints gray (unpixelated) to a color printer, but plotting sets to a color printer is cost prohibitive.

Thanks for the troubleshooting help.

Edited on: Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 2:05:36 PM

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