2012

Assign Pen Settings to Plotters Without Pens
Many plotters that do not use pens can simulate the performance of a pen
plotter by using virtual pens. For many devices, you can control the virtual
pens in the device with software or, by configuring them from the plotter's
control panel, with hardware.
If you allow software to control the pens, the Plot Style Table values for the
Lineweight, Linetype, Screening, Line End Style, Line Join Style, and Fill Style
settings are effective and override the settings on the plotter's control panel.
If you turn off software control of the pen attributes (typically done on the
plotter), then the software can select virtual pens but can't control lineweight,
linetype, end style, join style, fill style, or color. In the program, you select
hardware (virtual pen) control over software (normal) control by selecting
255 Virtual Pens in the Color Depth area of the Vector Graphics option on
the Device and Document Settings tab in the Plotter Configuration Editor.
Selecting any other color depth specifies software control.
In the Plot Style Table Editor under Virtual Pen #, you can specify a virtual
pen number between 1 and 255. Enter 0 or Automatic to specify that the
virtual pen assignment should be made from the ACI.
When you create a plot style table, it is important to remember that it can be
used with many different plotters and that the plotter and mode determine
what parts of the plot style table are enabled.
■ When using a pen plotter with user assigned pens, the virtual pen number
and any color assignments are ignored.
■ When using a pen plotter with automatically assigned pens, pens are
selected based on entity color and entity lineweight. Virtual pen numbers
are ignored.
■ When using a raster plotter in raster mode, the physical pen number and
the virtual pen number are ignored.
■ When using a raster plotter in virtual pen mode, everything except the
virtual pen number is ignored.
NOTE If you use another application to process your plot files after creating them,
and you modify the pen attributes, plotting without using virtual pens results in
pen numbers in the plot file having no simple relationship to object colors in the
program. This makes it difficult to apply additional pen attributes.
Change Plot Style Settings | 1235