Hatch line issues when printing

Question:

I am having trouble with the colored horizontal connector bar with the thin hash (or hatch) line printing in solid black. I am printing to a HP755CM plotter printer. Solid color bars print OK; all other color prints OK; thicker hashed fills print OK.

Have forced color, and changed all available plotter options regarding color.

Answer:

This is what we know about problems with hatch fills:

The fill patterns listed before the brick patternfill patterns listed before the brick pattern are done by the various Windows device drivers, screen or printer. The HP drivers frequently have problems with the hatch patterns. Sometimes the hatch lines are so close to each other they appear solid. Sometimes they slant the wrong direction.

Sometimes using a different driver, if one is available, helps the problem.

The 4 hatch patterns in the list of connectors after the brick pattern4 hatch patterns in the list of connectors after the brick pattern would probably give more consistent results, since they are done using bitmaps both on the screen and the printer.

Further suggestions:

- Download and install the latest printer driver.
- Change the connector pattern to solid (not the hash-mark pattern).
- Or, change the connector type to increase the thickness.
- Or, change the color of the connector to a darker color (e.g. from blue to navy). The dithering process in a 600 dpi printer might not pick up light colors or thin lines.