[solved] Opaque Fill

[dickbob]

I have an architectural drawing that has a basin on the wall with boxing below it along the wall/floor junction.

Rather than snip out the portion of the boxing that would be hidden by the basin above, can I give the basin outline an opaque fill so that the boxing is automatically hidden if I slide the basin along the wall or move it to another wall with boxing beneath?

[andrew]

With the hatch tool, you can also create solid fills:
https://qcad.org/doc/qcad/latest/refere ... mSelection

[dickbob]

Sorry, but I can't seem to get this to work for me as I want.

I'm made sure the shape is closed, selected it, then Draw > Hatch > Hatch from Selection (HA) then selected Solid Fill which then fills the shape with the Layer colour. I then select the hatch block and set the colour to White with the Property Editor.

When editing the drawing all I see is the white shape, which is not ideal but when printing it prints as a solid black shape.

Am I missing something or is there no solution to my problem?

[CVH]

Hi,
Change the Alpha value of the Hatch entity in the Property Editor.

Regards,
CVH

[andrew]

To allow white on white printing, please change your preferences as described here:
https://qcad.org/rsforum/viewtopic.php?p=24336#p24332

[dickbob]

Thank you CVH, the alpha value is already 255.

Thank you Andrew, I did manage to get that white on white printing working on a new, fresh, simple, drawing from first principles. I just can't get it to work with my drawing. I guess I must have something screwed up in the layering in my ignorance of how to structure a QCAD drawing -- frustrating!

[petevick]

Thank you CVH, the alpha value is already 255.

What CVH meant is that you reduce the alpha value to increase the transparency, or opacity, of the color

[andrew]

I just can't get it to work with my drawing.

Perhaps, you can attach your drawing, so we can help efficiently, thanks.

[dickbob]

Thanks Pete, I did understand what CVH meant but I did an experiment just to confirm that 255 = totally opaque and 0 = totally transparent so 255 is what I need and what the hatch block was originally set to when I created it.

I think, Andrew, I've managed to workout the settings I need to get it to work as I want. Drawing Preferences > Printing > Colors > Full Color or Grayscale with the Background color set to White. Setting the Color Mode to Black / white prints my filled blocks as black.

It prints ok but I've now got all these white blocks on the drawing as I'm working on the.

Thank you for your offer to review my drawing (please don't laugh), I will take you up on that -- please see attached.

[Husky]

@ dickbob,

just for clarification. A proper CAD drawing would contain the hidden parts as a dashed line like this example:

Husky-2021.05.21-01.png (25.12 KiB) Viewed 17187 times

What you are trying to do is to use features from a Graphical software in a CAD software - that will only work to a certain point. I don't think it will ever work with the chosen color black or white just because the Model_Space has a black background and the Print Preview has a white background. What ever the QCAD preferences are to deal with black on black or white on white has to fail in one or another way. That's fact!
Howsoever - to come close to your goal you could use colors for the hatch like "Light gray" or something similar and the result could be something like this:

in Model_Space ...

Husky-2021.05.21-02.png (23.84 KiB) Viewed 17187 times

... and in Print Priview

Husky-2021.05.21-03.png (24.42 KiB) Viewed 17187 times

If the hatch is still hiding lines you can play with "Bring to Front" or "Send to Back". BTW: I kept Alpha to 255 ...

[dickbob]

Thanks for your insight Husky.

[growdigital]

[quote=CVH post_id=33328 time=1621508106 user_id=
Change the Alpha value of the Hatch entity in the Property Editor.

I'm trying to add opacity to a solid hatch fill but there doesn't seem to be Alpha input on the Specific Properties in Property Editor.

Has it been moved elsewhere?

thank you, Jake

QCAD Pro 3.23.0.0 on Linux Mint 22.1 (Ubuntu Noble)

[CVH]

I'm trying to add opacity to a solid hatch fill but there doesn't seem to be Alpha input on the Specific Properties in Property Editor.

Please consult the QCAD Changelog

The Alpha channel for Hatch entities was introduced for QCAD v3.26.0 (2021/03/02)
QCAD v3.23.0 was released on 2019/07/19

You need to update your 6 year old installation.


Regards,
CVH

[growdigital]

OMG is it really 6 years old?!? Seems like only yesterday that I upgraded…

Thank you for clearing that one up