Love 'em or hate 'em?
I am wondering if I should use wipeouts in blocks. I can see it being a line trimming time saver, but I don't want plot issues and display order issues.
Thoughts/opinions?
Once the block has the right draw order, it should be fine. Just make sure WIPEOUT -> F -> OFF. I recently updated most of my blocks to include wipeouts. For curves, draw a polygon with a ton of sides to emulate the curve.
I use random blocks all the time (COPYBASE, PASTEBLOCK or SHIFT+CTRL+C, SHIFT+CTRL+V) Using Carlson I specify MTEXT for contour labels, then use BACKGROUND MASK, then isolate them all and make a block out of them. When DRAW ORDER messes up, I only have to grab one object to fix it. Simple enough to EXPLODE, move an object, isolate, copy, erase previous, and paste.
Love to hate em....
It's absolutely better to leave you linework in tact and hide it under your block.
But sometimes it doesn't stay there. Someone suggested it is because of using escape to cancel certain commands. Samething with your LTScale.
It's a pain to check each one before sending it to the plotter; you always forget one....
Thanks for the input.
Most of the blocks I am using have boxes with 1 or 2 characters of text (some are circles) and I have been using the pline method of defining the wipeout. So far I have not seen any issues with pdfs etc.
I assume most folks run into issues with wipeouts when they start exploding drawing entities.
I strongly discourage wipeouts in blocks. I found an alternative and it is a simple fix. Whatever your block is, lets use a circle with a 1.0 diameter for the scenario. Make your block then offset the outer line 0.1 (or whatever) and make that line the color 255. Then hatch everything with a solid hatch and make the hatching the color 255. Select all the color 255 items and "send them to the back" in the draw order. Then you can make a block and it will always cover up whatever is behind it. There will be NO MORE issues with wipeouts. It really is a pretty easy fix.
I just started using your method because others were having problems plotting and ceating PDFs. I never had any problems at all. The issue I have now is that the hatch appears white on the screen. Now I can't tell an open circle from a solid circle, etc.
Me. "What's the difference?"
T.C. Carroll "It's the difference between right and wrong!"
I had that problem, so I avoided wipeouts. I found newer PDF creators do it right, so I am going back to wipeouts.
One solution to the PDFs is to save them as TIFs then convert them back to PDFs.
dwg - dwf - pdf
Another similar work around for plotters that can't handle masking is to first, write out a dwf from your drawing, and then print your pdf from that.