Trimble Business Center

Hi there - looking for some guidance please (expect these queries have already been covered off elsewhere but not always easy to find).

1. Bring a layer forward/backwards - I have a title border for my plan templates and noticed that the linework from the dynaview is printing over the top (when printed to .pdf). The border sits at Planset level and is in black, line weight ~3.5mm. The dynaview layers are usually a lighter colour (Grey/Dark Grey). What I've noticed is that the dynaview layers print above the border linework, out to the centre of the border line itself  (see screen clip below). I need to confirm whether there is a way to either bring the border layer forwards, or send the dynaview layers beneath, back. I should also point out that I print to .pdf and then print the .pdfs as normal (to hard copies). Interestingly, the .pdf prints do not exhibit the issue, but the hard copy prints do. I'm wondering whether this has something to do with the issue? Also, I often get contours printing over top of say, boundary or design layer lines (see examples A & B in below screen clip). Again, is there a way to prioritise a layer to have it print infront/behind?
2. TBC PDF hard copy print finish - Following on from the above, has anybody worked out a way to get TBC drafted plan sets to look nice straight from the printer? My usual workflow is to print to .pdf first, then hard copy from our office printer. However, the resulting plots always appear blotchy and garishly coloured, with emboldened text etc. compared with a plan straight from say, AutoCAD (same printer). They also look quite different to the .pdf copy I see on the screen. Any guidance or tips would be gratefully received.
3. Grid View settings - I have a standard grid style, which is set up to have grid intersections crosses within the sheet and labelling at the sheet edges. I keep getting labels running outside the border and onto the edges of the paper (see screen clip). Any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance.

Hello Barney,

that's a topic that Trimble doesn't bother to address since several years. I just pushed it to hour dealer a few weeks ago, again. And the usual answer was, yes those are known issues which have been pushed to Trimble several times.

1.

• you can try the view priority in the layer manager, it's only got 3 levels, the old Terramodel had way more
• 
• but it doesn't matter, I've demonstrated often enough that it is not working correctly from plan-view to sheet-view to PDF
• view priority and order don't work properly in Plan view, Sheet View, PDF | Trimble Business Center
• below screen shots taken with V2024.00
• plan view, all correct
• sheet view, circles wrong
• PDF, all somewhat wrong

2. TBC is printing text always as line work, other programs can print text to PDF as selectable text (which makes the PDF smaller, searchable and the text can be scaled without loss of quality); it also depends on using the built-in PDF creator or i.e. "Microsoft print to PDF" which produces much smaller files at the cost of even worse quality

screen shots after using the Microsoft renderer

stroke font

or filled polygons true type font

the outline of a whiteout box seems to be a line, but the inside an image that's not 100% blending with a tilted whiteout outline

3. since the text is plotted as linework you'd imagine that they should be able to clip it easily at the sheet borders, at least during PDF creation, but it seems we're doomed to move text around manually to make sure it's either completely within or outside of the dynaview outline

Hi there - looking for some guidance please (expect these queries have already been covered off elsewhere but not always easy to find).

1. Bring a layer forward/backwards - I have a title border for my plan templates and noticed that the linework from the dynaview is printing over the top (when printed to .pdf). The border sits at Planset level and is in black, line weight ~3.5mm. The dynaview layers are usually a lighter colour (Grey/Dark Grey). What I've noticed is that the dynaview layers print above the border linework, out to the centre of the border line itself  (see screen clip below). I need to confirm whether there is a way to either bring the border layer forwards, or send the dynaview layers beneath, back. I should also point out that I print to .pdf and then print the .pdfs as normal (to hard copies). Interestingly, the .pdf prints do not exhibit the issue, but the hard copy prints do. I'm wondering whether this has something to do with the issue? Also, I often get contours printing over top of say, boundary or design layer lines (see examples A & B in below screen clip). Again, is there a way to prioritise a layer to have it print infront/behind?
2. TBC PDF hard copy print finish - Following on from the above, has anybody worked out a way to get TBC drafted plan sets to look nice straight from the printer? My usual workflow is to print to .pdf first, then hard copy from our office printer. However, the resulting plots always appear blotchy and garishly coloured, with emboldened text etc. compared with a plan straight from say, AutoCAD (same printer). They also look quite different to the .pdf copy I see on the screen. Any guidance or tips would be gratefully received.
3. Grid View settings - I have a standard grid style, which is set up to have grid intersections crosses within the sheet and labelling at the sheet edges. I keep getting labels running outside the border and onto the edges of the paper (see screen clip). Any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks Ronny - the Display Priority tip worked for me, so that's awesome.

Another thing I'm grappling with is the way hard copy prints from PDF render linework when I have a background aerial image. When you look closely at the linework, there's a razor-thin sliver of almost white page either side of linework and the image behind - I can only presume the printer is creating a 'gap' in the aerial for the linework i.e. rather than printing over the top, as it were. It wouldn't be too bigger deal if it was just in the odd isolated spot, but if I have include contours over the aerial, it becomes really noticable. I've placed a couple of images below; 1) the PDF on my monitor, 2) the resulting hard copy out of our office printer and 3) the best close-up I can get of the contour rendering issue mentioend above.

I suspect I'll be advised to use a better printer/plotter, but pretty sure I can run off plenty of other PDF docs containing plans and photo's on our office printer, that come out looking perfectly acceptable whereas the TBC PDFs are rough as guts?

Hello Barney,

that's a topic that Trimble doesn't bother to address since several years. I just pushed it to hour dealer a few weeks ago, again. And the usual answer was, yes those are known issues which have been pushed to Trimble several times.

1.

• you can try the view priority in the layer manager, it's only got 3 levels, the old Terramodel had way more
• 
• but it doesn't matter, I've demonstrated often enough that it is not working correctly from plan-view to sheet-view to PDF
• view priority and order don't work properly in Plan view, Sheet View, PDF | Trimble Business Center
• below screen shots taken with V2024.00
• plan view, all correct
• sheet view, circles wrong
• PDF, all somewhat wrong

2. TBC is printing text always as line work, other programs can print text to PDF as selectable text (which makes the PDF smaller, searchable and the text can be scaled without loss of quality); it also depends on using the built-in PDF creator or i.e. "Microsoft print to PDF" which produces much smaller files at the cost of even worse quality

screen shots after using the Microsoft renderer

stroke font

or filled polygons true type font

the outline of a whiteout box seems to be a line, but the inside an image that's not 100% blending with a tilted whiteout outline

3. since the text is plotted as linework you'd imagine that they should be able to clip it easily at the sheet borders, at least during PDF creation, but it seems we're doomed to move text around manually to make sure it's either completely within or outside of the dynaview outline

Hi there - looking for some guidance please (expect these queries have already been covered off elsewhere but not always easy to find).

1. Bring a layer forward/backwards - I have a title border for my plan templates and noticed that the linework from the dynaview is printing over the top (when printed to .pdf). The border sits at Planset level and is in black, line weight ~3.5mm. The dynaview layers are usually a lighter colour (Grey/Dark Grey). What I've noticed is that the dynaview layers print above the border linework, out to the centre of the border line itself  (see screen clip below). I need to confirm whether there is a way to either bring the border layer forwards, or send the dynaview layers beneath, back. I should also point out that I print to .pdf and then print the .pdfs as normal (to hard copies). Interestingly, the .pdf prints do not exhibit the issue, but the hard copy prints do. I'm wondering whether this has something to do with the issue? Also, I often get contours printing over top of say, boundary or design layer lines (see examples A & B in below screen clip). Again, is there a way to prioritise a layer to have it print infront/behind?
2. TBC PDF hard copy print finish - Following on from the above, has anybody worked out a way to get TBC drafted plan sets to look nice straight from the printer? My usual workflow is to print to .pdf first, then hard copy from our office printer. However, the resulting plots always appear blotchy and garishly coloured, with emboldened text etc. compared with a plan straight from say, AutoCAD (same printer). They also look quite different to the .pdf copy I see on the screen. Any guidance or tips would be gratefully received.
3. Grid View settings - I have a standard grid style, which is set up to have grid intersections crosses within the sheet and labelling at the sheet edges. I keep getting labels running outside the border and onto the edges of the paper (see screen clip). Any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance.