Choosing the color of your image

When you print an image from the canvas directly to a printer or a file, you can use the Print dialog box to select the color of your image. The following color options are available:

Black&White

Use this option to print black images on a white background. This option is useful for printing wireframe and hidden-line images of parts, assemblies, and meshes, including any partitions and datum geometry. You can also print black and white images of undeformed and deformed shape plots. When you choose Black&White, Abaqus/CAE always prints a black image on a white background, and the viewport background is printed as either transparent or white. This option should not be used for printing images that depend heavily on color, such as contour plots.

Greyscale

Use this option to print greyscale versions of color images, where each color is approximated by a shade of gray. (Abaqus/CAE converts each color to one of 256 true shades of gray.) This option is useful for printing color images, such as contour plots, to a black and white laser printer. To improve the appearance of images sent to a printer, you may want to print viewports with the background turned off (so that it appears white or transparent).

Color

Use this option to print an approximation of the colors you see. If you try to print a color image to a black and white printer, the printer converts the colors to shades of gray.

By default, Abaqus/CAE uses up to 256 different colors for raster printed images (PNG, TIFF, and raster-format PostScript). However, for TIFF or PNG printed images you can choose to allow more colors, which increases the file size but allows the image to more closely match the display. For more information, see Customizing the image saved in TIFF, PNG, or SVG files.

Related Topics
Understanding printing
Controlling the destination and appearance of printed images

  1. From the main menu bar, select FilePrint.

    Tip: You can also click in the File toolbar.

    The Print dialog box appears.

  2. From the Rendition text box in the Settings field, select one of the following color options:

    • Select Black&White to create a black image on a white background.

    • Select Greyscale to print a greyscale approximation of a color image.

    • Select Color to print a color approximation of the colors on your screen.

  3. When you have finished with the Print dialog box, click OK to generate the desired output.

    Abaqus/CAE generates the output and closes the Print dialog box. Your settings in the Print dialog box are saved for the duration of the session.