We can plot layers to a PDF file, a very nice feature for documentation. Trying to plot a mechanical 2D drawing, where the body being dimensioned is on line User layer, and the dimensions are on a second User layer. I usually configure the layer colors so the main item stands out and the dimension lines are subdued – for example white object and yellow dimension lines.
Things get interesting when making a plot. Colors that look good on the screen don’t translate well to the page. The white doesn’t become black, for example, but a kind of gray. Trying to plot things in black and white works also, but now the lines all have equal widths. In a monochrome plot of a dimensioned object, you’d want the object to have thicker lines and the dimensions thinner lines.
I can’t find any settings to control either (a) an alternative color map for printing, nor (b) any way to control line width by layer. Finally just did it manually, by selecting all the items and changing their widths.
I don’t see a problem beyond your not trying out everything Kicad offers as tools/resources. Make notes on what the clicked items do and where they’re located (including Middle and Right mouse btn clicks…)
Items on left are the resulting PDF shown on screen. Everything is Crisp and Colored
I know this is subjective, but against a black background, darker colors don’t stand out as much as lighter ones. But against a white background, it’s the opposite — at least to my eyes. Consider a mechanical drawing of a PCB outline. Say the outline itself is white and the dimensions lines are blue. This looks great on screen. The PCB outline is the most prominent feature and the dimensions are perceived as clearly distinct. But when printed as a color PDF, this is reversed. Now the dimensions jump out because they have such a high contrast, while the PCB outline almost fades into the paper. I don’t know how one would solve this, short of two color tables for layers — one for displays and one for paper, but that seems extreme. Maybe there is a way to invert colors?
Ignoring colors, line widths are the way to go for black and white plots. Usually in drafting standards the dimensions use narrower lines than the items being dimensioned. That’s easy to do in KiCad, and I did exactly that. What was asking in my question above was whether or not there was a way to override line widths by layer for the purposes of plotting. For example, my mechanical drawing layers all used 0.1 mm line widths and are differentiated on the screen by color. For plotting, I’d like say 0.3 mm line width for the main item layer and maybe 0.075 mm line width for the dimensions. In hindsight, while that kind of plot control makes sense for something like 2D AutoCAD, I’m not sure it would be a reasonable thing to do in a PCB design tool. So I withdraw the line width portion of my question. I’ll just make the line widths as desired from the start.
One reason I was slow to adopt this notion is that I had a lot of grouped objects that were imported DXF files. You can’t just right click and change line widths for an object. But it’s easy enough to y group them, change widths, and regroup. Or just import them again using the desired line widths.
