UTILITY SETUP PLOTTER Control

                                        

This command enables characteristics of the plotter device to be set.

Control Comments

COLOUR [n] Defines the number of colours available (see note 1).

POLYFILL [OFF] Sets if polygon fill is available.

SIZECHAR n Height Width Sets the height and width for character size code 'n' (see note 1).

SCALE s (See note 2).

FORMAT POSTSCRPT MONOCHROM Specifies the required

COLOUR format of the plot file.

NEUTRAL (See note 3). INTERLEAF LASERJET PAINTJET HPGL HPGL2 DESKJET CGM

HARDCOPY (See note 4)

Notes:

1.

Plotter character sizes and colours
Plotter character height and width are defined in the plotting range 0-9999. If the user selects UTILITY SETUP PLOTTER COLOURS 14 then the contouring colours will be in the range 1 to 14, where 1 is dark blue, and 14 is bright red. If the number of colours is not set then these will be dependent upon the currently selected graphics display.

2.

Plotter character size scaling
The character size for the plotfile can be adjusted by a scaling factor. This factor is a ratio of the size allocated to characters in the plotfile as compared to the size allocated to characters on the current graphics display screen. The default ratio is 1.1 so that the size allocated to characters in the plotfile is slightly larger than those used for the display. If a plotfile is written from viewport zero, and recovered into viewport one, for example, the character fields may tend to be rather crowded, as the character size cannot be set small enough to map to the smaller viewport. Setting the plotter character size scale to 2.0 before writing the plotfile will overcome this problem.

3.

Plotter file format
It is possible to specify that data be written to a plot file either in the `neutral' format described in Appendix E of the User Manual Appendices or in Postscript, Interleaf, HP Laserjet, HP Paintjet, HP-GL, HP-GL/2, HP Deskjet or CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) format. With Postscript, both colour and monochrome devices are supported.

4.

Hardcopy format
Note that the format HARDCOPY causes the file to be written using the screen hardcopy facility of the graphics device.

5.

Use of Start-up files
The above UTILITY SETUP commands can always be stored in a file and read in at the start of a FEMGV run, see the User Manual Appendices.

Examples:

1.

UTILITY SETUP PLOTTER COLOUR 14

This command sets the plotter driver to use just 14 colours when contouring, and for shading. This would be the default setting if the currently selected graphics device was a 16 colour display where two colours would be used for black and for white, and the remaining 14 colours would be available for contouring, or for generating shaded pictures.

2.

UTILITY SETUP PLOTTER COLOUR 8

This command sets the plotter driver to use just 8 colours when contouring, and would be necessary e.g. if the user were to use the output to drive an 8 pen plotter.

3.

UTILITY SETUP PLOTTER FORMAT POSTSCRPT COLOUR

This command sets the plotter driver to deliver a colour postscript plotfile, and would be necessary if, for example, the user were to use the output to drive a laser plotter requiring a postscript input file.

See also the following commands

'DRAWING SAVE'