Hello! I'm having some problem trying to plot a cad drawing in black and white.

[Anonymous]

I've tried checking the 'monochrome' option in the plot style table but the drawing comes out with the coloured layers. Thank you.

[hwalker]

That sounds strange as monochrome.ctb and .stb are both tables which have been set by Autocad to plot Black and White.

I suggest you run the plot style manager and have a look at both of those, just to see that someone hasn't edited them to plot in colour.

[nestly2]

Are you plotting from Modelspace, or a Layout tab?

If the Model tab, is your visual style something other than 2DWireframe?

[dgorsman]

As well, TrueColor will ignore plot style settings.  CTB (by color) uses an integer color index to look up the plot width; STB (by style) uses a name.  TrueColor is an RGB color which can't easily be mapped to a plot setting, and is usually reserved for creating pretty pictures.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the reply. Yes I'm plotting from the model space. I did check teh visual style and it's set to 2d wireframe.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. Hmm I'm still not sure how to solve my problem. It's a bit annoying now I've tried many things.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. I typed in 'Plot Styles' but this notification comes up. I'm new to Autocad 2014 and I;m not sure what to do to print this drawing in black and white. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Thanks.

[nestly2]

Are you using CTB, or STB

Is "Plot with Plot Styles" checked in the plot dialog page?

Are the colored objects "ByLayer" or do they have object level color overrides applied?

Are the colors 1-255 index colors, or are the True Colors

If possible, use ETRANSMIT to create a zip file containing the drawing and the plot file table, and attach it here.

[Anonymous]

Thanks,

I'm fairly new to Autocad but I have to find out how to plot this drawing. I'm not sure what the difference between ctb and stb is. I think I'm using in the 'Plot Styles Table' monochrome.ctb. The 'plot with styles' box is checked.

The coloured lines are on different layers and I applied different colours on them. I'm not sure what index colours and True Colours mean.

I also have to mention that I exported this drawing from Google Shetchup as a dwg and I've re-instated the levels to the lines. Maybe there is a problem with that I'm not too sure. I've followed the instructions  from this a youtube video.

One thing which I did was to create new layer and assign the line colours on layers. Because Autocad didnt seem to load the existing layers from Sketchup. The only layer which appears is the Layer 0, so I created the other ones again.

I'm gonna try to attach the drawing in here.

[nestly2 · Accepted solution]

If the color name is 3 numbers separated by a comma (Red/Green/Blue), then it's a "True Color" which isn't supported by CTB.  You can convert CTB to STB (which does support True Color), however I personally have no experience using Style Based plot files. 

You have a few options

1) Change the colors to Index colors and use the existing monochrome or greyscale CTB.

2) Convert/create a monochrome STB plot file that supports the existing True Colors

3) Do not apply color overrides to individual objects, rather group similar objects by their type and place them on an appropriately named layer, Remove the color overrides (change the color of everything to ByLayer") and use the Layer color setting to define the object color.  Using this method, all similar objects are displayed the same way.  Every object on a layer can be easily changed to a different color by simply changing the layer color, and layers can be displayed differently in different viewports. 

[pendean]

Your objects have their own colors, and they are TRUECOLORS (RGB code, type LIST and see for your self). Plot Style tables do not affect RGB colors.

Your Layers are set to different colors designed to work with plot style tables.

It is considered bad-drafting-practice to have your object colors and other properties settings different from your layer color and other settings: it makes quick fixes very difficult.

So... do you want to keep the colors of the objects, or do you want to use the layer colors?

Start COLOR command: INDEX COLOR tab is what plot style tables control.
Now select one of your objects, start PROPERTIES command, select the color pulldown and choose SELECT COLOR: you will see presented that most of your objects are not in the INDEX COLOR tab.
That's your problem and why MONOCHROME doesn't work. Click over to the INDEX COLOR tab and pick a comparable color from there for your objects.

[Anonymous]

This is greaat! Thanks for your help, I really appreciate your detailed advice. I've managed to set it right. Although it;s a minor thing, I feel great that it's now working fine. Thank you very much.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply. I've just managed to sort it out and it feels great. I appreciate your advice 🙂