Pen Thickness

How do you set the pen thickness for new entities? I've tried setting under Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness, but new lines are always drawn with pen thickness 0. I can set individual pen thickness on existing objects using the same value and that works fine.

Comments

  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Try adjusting the line width instead, and leave the pen thickness alone - unless you want a thicker line around a filled area.

    Although it is easier to use, the drawback with using line thickness instead of using pen thickness is that the polygon is hollow as a result of having a line width greater than 0

    Just click the little window where either are displayed at the top
  • I don't think line width does the job, it just shows a "hollow" line (two lines) instead, as you have said.

    Out of interest, what does the Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness actually do then?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    If you have the fill set to Hollow as well as a line width setting greater than 0, then you will get a double line. Set the fill to whatever solid fill and colour you want to have, or to a bitmap fill if you want a textured line. Then you should get a solid line, instead of double tramlines :)

    Like it says in the dialog - pen thickness is always the same no matter how zoomed in or out you are.

    If you want to set the pen thickness and use one of the drawing tools, you will have to make a new drawing tool based on the existing one you wish to use (give it a new name or you will overwrite the default drawing tool you modify), and then it will draw with the new pen thickness.

    The disadvantage of using pen thickness is that if you render your map very small the pen thickness will be the same as if you rendered it super large - on the small map the lines would be overpoweringly dominant and a bit of a mess, while on the large map they might be barely noticeable. That's one of the reasons I prefer line width adjustments, since line width is in map units, not inches. Anything in map units will get bigger and smaller with the rest of the map.
  • MonsenMonsen Administrator 🖼️ 46 images Cartographer
    Posted By: ian54Out of interest, what does the Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness actually do then?
    Pen thickness is a very old legacy feature which is only really useful when you print your map on an actual plotter. Used to be quite common for technical drawings. And when used with a plotterm it does exactly as advertised, sets the pen thickness the plotter used.
    This features used to be more visible in the UI, but have now been removed from almost everywhere due to it being useless for most people.
  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    I would very much recommend against using Pen Thickness. It's a holdover from the long-ago times where the output of the FastCAD program was done by a mechanical plotter using physical pens. If you're planning to use effects or bitmaps in your drawing, then you are already incompatible with mechanical plotters, so setting the pen thickness is almost always unhelpful.

    If it were up to me (and it's not), I would disappear the Tools -> Set Properties -> Pen Thickness menu item altogether. If I was feeling generous, I might redirect it to a notice with an option to use the line thickness dialog for a few updates until people forgot all about it, and then remove it entirely.
  • "The disadvantage of using pen thickness is that if you render your map very small the pen thickness will be the same as if you rendered it super large "

    I'm using this for an overlay grid, so this is not a problem. It also applies to circles so this is really convenient.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    I think you may be misunderstanding our descriptions (mine probably)

    If you set the pen thickness to .01 of an inch, for example, it will be fine on a normal sized map, but if you print it just as a thumbnail it will cover everything else on the map, so that if those lines are black they will merge into a single black square - and that will be your map.
  • I took a class in AutoCAD in college, pen thickness has no use for the maps made with this software. Line Width, as mentioned above, is the way to go.
  • Note, if you are setting line thickness and getting a pair of lines or a hollow entity with two lines, this is because your fill style is set to hollow, change it to solid when you set a non-zero line width (in most cases).
  • I've taken the advice of the community, set the pen thickness to zero, the line width to around 0.01 and set the fill style to solid. Thanks all.
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