Original Author: Bentley Technical Support Group

This Client Server article is republished in its entirety from 2003 for reference purposes.

Consistent Line Thickness

You can produce a consistent line thickness across various plotters and printers by utilizing an InterPlot pen table, which may be created with a text editor. This article will cover a basic Interplot pen table using the weight_base and weight_delta keywords.

When preceded by an exclamation point (!), the information is considered to be a comment within the pen table.

The weight_base and weight_delta keywords map line weights to physical thicknesses on the plot. Using these keywords, you can get consistent line thicknesse

Weight	Plot Thickness
0	0.10 cm
1	0.15 cm
2	0.20 cm
.	.
.	.
.	.
31	1.65 cm

s across a number of plotters. The weight_base keyword specifies the line thickness for an element of weight 0. The weight_delta keyword specifies an additional line thickness increment to add for each line weight above 0.

Use the following formula to calculate line thickness using the weight_base and weight_delta keywords:

plot thickness = weight_base + (element weight * weight_delta)

For example, if the weight_base is 0.1 cm and weight_delta is 0.05 cm, the following values are used:

 

You must define the weight_base and weight_delta keywords at the beginning of the pen table.

Syntax:

weight_base = positive_real 
weight_delta = positive_real

Example:

! 
! Map element's line weight to a thickness on 
! the plot. 
! weight 0 = 0.10 mm 
! weight 1 = 0.15 mm 
! weight 2 = 0.20 mm 
! weight 3 = 0.25 mm 
! . 
! . 
! . 
! weight 31 = 1.65 mm

 

The following information would be the active data in the pen table:
units = mm 
weight_base = 0.1 
weight_delta = 0.05

 

In this case the pen table is named weight.pen. The .pen extension is the default for all InterPlot pen tables.

 

Upon completion of the pen table, the user should access the MSDOS command prompt and change directories to the location of the pen table. InterPlot provides a utility called penck, which is used for checking the pen table for syntax errors. If there are any syntax errors, penck will output an error message identifying each error and the line number where the error occurred. Example: penck weight.pen

See Also

Client Server Archive

ProjectWise TechNotes And FAQs

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