Often, the way you work on-screen does not produce easy to read printouts. For example, you may use yellow and cyan colored lines on-screen because they are easy to see against a black background. When these same lines are printed in color on white paper, the result is not easy to read.

MicroStation lets you create pen tables that, in turn, let you change the symbology of design file elements for printing purposes. During this process, the design file is not changed in any way. The resymbolization occurs for the printed output only.

You can also change the symbology of design file elements for printing purposes using design scripts. Design scripts are ASCII files that are created using a text editor like Notepad, and like pen tables they do not change the design file in any way.

Using a pen table or design script you can change the symbology of elements, including:

• Do not plot (True / False)
• Priority
• Fill
• Color
• Fill color
• Screening
• Transparency
• Fill Pattern
• Width
• Style
• Line Cap
• Line Join

You can also specify text replacement for generic text items (such as a title in a border).

Pen tables and design scripts can be used to resymbolize any design file for printing. Thus, you can produce several different printed outputs from the one design file, without changing an element in the design. The sections, Print Resymbolization and Pen Tables and Print Resymbolization and Design Scripts, cover these topics.