Text mask problem.

Print to pdf first. ?ÿThen plot the pdf file on the wide format prrinter?

I appreciate the response.

That has been my work around. and yes that will work. I was hoping to just get this worked out so other users could print directly from cad. I would just hate to have that as an extra step every time you want to send a print.

@mag-eye I personally prefer to print to PDF first that way I can review it without wasting paper and I can e-mail it to other people to review and mark up as well.

It may be that an updated print driver will solve your problem.?ÿ ?ÿIf not, look into creating a .pc3 file for your plot driver, and experiment with the lines overwrite/merge settings.

?ÿ

Had the same mysterious problem for several years. Didn't happen often, and seemed to be just on larger drawings. Printing to pdf then to a plotter did work, but with a slight decrease in quality. It went away when I dumped the old HP 430D and E plotters and got a Canon iPF780. I understand your frustration.

I do mtext if I want it masked.

@norman-oklahoma I was thinking the same regarding .pc3, and yes i tried experimenting with the line merge settings with no noticeable change.

I've had so many issues with text mask.?ÿ I do it, it looks fine, but then the next time I'm in the dwg, the whole line of text along with the linework is invisible.

It's pretty annoying having to then go back and re-do the text mask on every one of them, and hope that I don't miss one.?ÿ I'm at the point now where I'll just trim lines instead, knowing that won't un-do itself.

@jph Agreed. I've learned to deal with what I consider the normal cad related issues with text mask (front back / if copied thru clipboard mask and text become 2 separate entities / pdf print as image unless you want blacked out text etc.)

Text mask problems just may be the most common cad problem searched on the internet.

Its a shame really. At the end of the day the finished cad product is lines and text.?ÿ

@mightymoe This is what I do. I gave up on "wipeout" based text masking years ago. Mtext "background mask" works reliably.

@peter-lothian

Damnnnn, I've never heard of that before.?ÿ

Just tried it, and it seems to work.?ÿ And it doesn't disappear like regular text mask does, for no reason?

@jph?ÿ No the text never disappears behind the mask. The only issue I've had is that the text sometimes "migrates" below the objects that I want masked over. You just have to use the draw order commands to fix it when that happens.

@peter-lothian

I learn something new from this site very often.?ÿ You may have saved me a lot of future frustration.

Thank you very much.?ÿ

@peter-lothian

Background masking of MTEXT is the way to go. I use MTEXT exclusively for text objects, partly because of the masking option.

It is unfortunate that there seems to be no way to make masking the default, nor any way to universally change a selection set of multiple MTEXT elements to masked, AFAIK.?ÿ?ÿ

@norman-oklahoma Yes, this is a grievous disappointment for me as well. The closest I can get is to select a number of mtext objects and change the background mask setting for all of them in the Properties dialog box.

CDC tells me now that I'm vaccinated I don't need the mask but I still have the same problem.?ÿ