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Converting Over From CTB to STB

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Message 1 of 11
cddrafting
6061 Views, 10 Replies

Converting Over From CTB to STB

I am in the process of coverting over to the STB plot style format and I have a problem which I cannot understand.

While in the drawing I want to convert I started with CONVERTCTB, the dilague box appears and I selected my current CTB plotstyle (the one I use to do my regular plots with) and upon accepting it another dialogue box appears asking me to name the new STB plotstyle. I did so and a message came up informing me the conversion was successful.

I then typed CONVERTPSTYLES and a message comes up followed by the dialogue box where I am to select an STB file. Here I selected the file I created in the CTB conversion in the previous step.

 

The conversion seemed to work correctly but when I go into the layer properties manager the plotstyles all have the same named style ie style 1, when I select one of these plotstyles to change it all except 3 styles are noted as missing.

 

I read that when I complete the conversion I should have plotstyles with old_pen_01 etc.

 

I have attached a snap shot of the resulting layer manager. The active plotstyle is the one that was converted during the CTB process ie the first step above

 

Where have I gone wrong or is there more for me to do?

Chris
10 REPLIES 10
Message 2 of 11
pendean
in reply to: cddrafting

Post your STB and CTB files instead.

Message 3 of 11
cddrafting
in reply to: pendean

Attahced is the original CTB and the newly created STB files.

Chris
Message 4 of 11
pendean
in reply to: cddrafting

Your CTB only contains two styles: all your pens are set to black and default to object lineweight (and other settings are identical), the only variation is a pen set at 50% screening. So your STB only contains two styles, one at 100% and one at 50%.

 

I think you may not fully understand what STB is about: it is not CTB with a different name, you don't assign 255 pens to the 255 colors you have on screen, you assign a style to any pen that plots differently. Screen color is irrelevant with STB, yellow, blue, green is all the same if you've set them all to plot black and use the objects lineweight.

 

So, to recap, you only have two ouput styles (STYLE_1 and STYLE_2) in your CTB, 100% and 50%: and that's all you get with STB when it is created. If your CTB had each pen totally unique (color is irrelevant, remember), then you would have 255 Styles in your STB as well. But you don't.

 

Hope that all makes sense.

Message 5 of 11
cddrafting
in reply to: pendean

What's with the link ?

I could not find any relevance to my problem here.

Chris
Message 6 of 11
pendean
in reply to: cddrafting

What link? Did I point you to a link?

 

Or are you not familiar with who-is-responding Signatures in Emails, hard-copy Correspondence, and here in public posting forums?

Message 7 of 11
cddrafting
in reply to: pendean

I have attached the requested plot styles.

I am an early Acad user (v2.6) and all that was available was what you now call a CTB file.

I have been using the 4 basic pen setups with the a specific colour representing the 0.25, 0.35, 0.5, 0.7.

Looking into the CTB file attached I see that there are only two screening types 100 and 50%. Which will confirm what you have said. Don't ask me how but I am still printing with the 4 pen thickness as per the layer manager properties. Specific colours will print specific line thicknesses.

Once I complete the conversion from CTB to STB as per previous posting when I go into the the layer properties manager and select the plot style (which is greyed out by the way) to make the required changes it will not accept the change and I can not therefore setup the required new plot style thicknesses.

 

Chris
Message 8 of 11
pendean
in reply to: cddrafting

If it is grayed out, your DWG file is still set to look for CTB, and not STB: CONVERTPSTYLES command changes a DWG from one format to the other. Repeat for every DWG file you want to change over to STB.

 

Why do you want to change to STB if you are used to and still rely on screen color to inform you of lineweights, if I may ask? Neither is going away anytime soon, if you read that somewhere they are wrong.

Message 9 of 11
cddrafting
in reply to: pendean

I concur with you that the greyed out plotstyle is a sign that the dwg is in CTB format.

I did do the CONVERTPSTYLES along with the Convert CTB and it still remains greyed out.

How many times must I do this before it accepts the request ?

 

Chris
Message 10 of 11
pendean
in reply to: cddrafting

Only once.

 

Start a new file and test and confirm you are working through the correct procedures: if you cannot get it to work, share this new file here and elaborate on what exactly failed and where.

Message 11 of 11
David_W_Koch
in reply to: cddrafting

It has been my experience that after running CONVERTPSTYLES to convert a drawing to use named plot styles, that I have to save the drawing and reopen it to be able to edit the named plot styles.  (The files were definitely converted, because the plot styles listed are those in the conversion STB file.  There must be some issue in the programming of the Layers palette that does not allow it to unlock the Plot Style column completely.  (It will let you click on a plot style and give you the dialog to change it, but any changes made do not stick.  You can click on the refresh icon on the Layers palette until the cows come home and the Plot Style column will remain grayed out.)  The good news is once you save and reopen the file, the Layers palette "gets" that the file is now using named plot styles and the Plot Style column is no longer grayed out and edits will stick.


David Koch
AutoCAD Architecture and Revit User
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