SQUIGGLE - plot problems
Russ Mcginn
seem to have a version lying round somewhere.
We recently bought Squiggle 4.0.3 which claimed to be able to open up
autocad drawings directly and would support the multiple paperspace layouts
generated in autocad 2000.
Unfortunately although the program allows drawings to be opened and viewed,
when we try to plot horrible things start to happen.
Horrible thing 1. is the inability to plot on any sheet of paper without
1/4 to 1/3 of the image being truncated at the bottom of the sheet. -
Adjusting the borders doesn't seem to work.
Horrible thing 2. is even when the plot that does come out it has
terrible resolution. Out 600dpi ricoh laser printer plots the images with
1mm wide blobs that looke like something that would have come out of a 60's
dot matrix.
Horrible thing 3. is the manual ('nuff said)
Horrible thing 4. is admitting defeat and reverting to the old method of
creating a HPGL/2 plot file and importing that into the program.
Unfortunately one of the great new features is to disallow most HPGL/2
generic printers apart from the HP7600 from creating images that can be read
by squiggle. Also the HP7600 was a monochrome printer so the .plt file that
imports cannot make use of colour dependant control of lineweights,
thicknesses etc. It also imports as a mirror image, just for a laugh, so
that we have to mirror all of our drawings before creating the plot file ( a
real problem where we've got proper paperspace title blocks and
information.) But we can through this convoluted labyrinth get a good
squiggled drawing.
What we would like to do is open the *,dwg files and print to A3 and get a
decent resolution image that fills the drawing sheet.
Anyone got any ideas?
Alan James Wooldridge
seemed hard work getting it to do what I wanted.
I found FREEHAND.lsp (c) Copyright 2000 TimeSavers for CAD from
http://www.timesaversforcad.com
This lisp routine modifies lines and polylines to appear as if drawn
freehand.
Two things occur:
1. Corners are given slight overlap.
2. Lines are given slight "wiggle" to them.
User can specify degree of both overlap & wiggle [1 small - 5 large,
0-none]
Accomplished by first lengthening each line, then replacing line
with LWPOLYLINE(R14) or POLYLINE(<R14) and adding slightly offset
vertices.
Ensure that you only FREEHAND a Copy of your elevation, once run there
is no way back ! Keep your original drawing safe.
Not only that but it's FREEWARE, give low tech a try you might like
the results.
Alan
Support for AutoCAD, IntelliCAD & Cadvance Users
Web Site http://www.cadalot.co.uk
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Molukka
says...
>
>Can't find a dedicated Squiggle newsgroup, but most architectural practices
>seem to have a version lying round somewhere.
>
Squiggle will output to a printer driver, and if you have Acrobat, an output to
distiller will create a vector based PDF file.
With a PDF there are several otions. 1) Zoom capture from Acrobat will capture
to a bitmap. 2) Open the file in Photoshop at a specified resolution. 3) Open
the PDF in a vector editor, and get a vector graphic.
M