Styling multiple shp files

[HousingAssocMonkey]

I have a large batch of OS data covering the housing stock of a housing association which I'd like to break down into 81seperate local area maps. There are 162 of these files and each of the local area maps covers 3 or so of the shp files. I'd like to style each map the same.

So I go into the style manager for one of the loaded shape files and create a simple style.

rule 1 DESCGRP = "Road" Style: none

rule 2 Default = thin black polygon.

I'd like some way fo doing this automatically or simply. Because doing it 162 times with all the shp files loaded is majorly time consuming and at soem point I'd like to be able to use more complex styles. Is there any easy way of doing this?

I also have all the shp files as gz files if that would make life easier and as lines rather than polygons.

Any ideas appreciated.

[parkr4st]

OS = ?

Is it possible to combine all of the shp into one file?

check up on *.layer files

Dave

[Neil47]

You probably won't like this but I've found that one method is to connect and style one shape file then in task pane save this as a .layer (this creates an xml based file with all styling preserved).  You can then copy this .layer file and find and replace any references to ShapeFile1 and replace with ShapeFile2.  In your case it will mean 161 other files to reference but once done these can be dragged and dropped into your dwg file, just make sure that the path name is referenced correctly.