I want all phantom lines faded when plotting - NOT BY COLOR

[RiskyKiddies]

I can set this up in my plotter style table editor by setting my screening to 50% by color choice in the .ctb file setup.

But this is by color only.

How can I set up a screening for my plotting by layer or linetype?  Are there any ways of doing this without writing a long lisp routine.  This is something AutoCAd should have been able to do a long time ago. 

I want all phantom lines screened down 50% when plotting.  But a they are on differnet laters and colors.  I don't really want to change all to one layer or color because it will entail a lot of work for this particular drawing.

[Yorx57]

I run a custom plot style in which my hidden lines will print lighter than my solid lines - I do have mine setup by colour, but you don't need to do that - the way I did mine was, in the plot style, was to set the colour to "black" (printing colour) and used the lineweights to produce "darker" and "lighter" printing.

I've just tied my AutoCAD colours to lineweights.  You should be able to do the same using lineweights directly.

FYI - for my printer, I use 0.0098" lineweight for solid lines and 0.0035" lineweight for my hidden.

[franegilic]

You can use transparency. In layer properties manager define transparency for layer/s you want to print fadded and when ploting 'Plot transparency' box should be checked.
You can also use named plot styles (*.stb) instead color depended plot styles (*.ctb), which you can assign to particular layer.
If I need to be more specific let me know.

[RiskyKiddies]

Yorx57, thanks but I have my .ctb settings as by layer, except for yellow as 0 because all my dimensions layer are set at yellow.

But I have all phantom lines set at a thin lineweight.  This does not screen back the color.  What you are telling me says they will be thin as possible, but not screened back to appear faded or grayscale when printed.

The only way I know how, and I don't like do it, is to qselect all lines that are phantom and turn them to color 8 or whatever is gray.  This way I can setup my ctb file so that all color 8 or grays will be plotted with 50% screening.

I was hoping there was a way to set screening to your layer or linetype outside of the ctb.  We can do that with lineweight thru layers.  Why can't we do that with screening or dithering to a layer?

If you can customize your ctb file to set screening (light or dark you mention) according to linetype or lineweight or layer, then I'd like to know how.

[pendean]

That's a CTB limitation: is you would switch to STB plot style tables then all you need to do is apply the correct 'style' to those elements without having to change their screen color.

Or, since you are a BYLAYER user, these objects ought to be in their won subset layer with the correct BYLAER properties assigned.

Pick a side 🙂

[Yorx57]

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@RiskyKiddies wrote:

 What you are telling me says they will be thin as possible, but not screened back to appear faded or grayscale when printed.

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 In my situation anyways, what I'm telling you is that this does work for me - visually, the lines will be printed the same width, however, the ones set to the thinner lineweight will print visually lighter (faded).  I have not tested this on other printers, so it just may be the way my printer is handling it.

Anyways, I believe what Pendean has stated regarding the way to do it in the way you require through STB is your answer.

"Named plot style tables (STB) contain user-defined plot styles. When you use a named plot style table, objects that have the same color may be plotted differently, based on the plot style assigned to the object. A named plot style table can contain as many or as few plot styles as required. Named plot styles can be assigned to objects or layers, just like any other property."

Thanks Pendean!! I didn't know about this, been using my CTB for years! 

[RiskyKiddies]

Never heard the STB plot style tables.  CTB is all I worked with since it is the default with no option of stb ever heard of thru the standard plot command.

How do you switch?

Work in ACAD 2015 Mechanical.

[RiskyKiddies]

See attached as steps I go thur but still in the dark on STB.