Making the switch to STB

[BrockJRW]

First, Thanks in advance for any help.

We just upgraded to ACA 2013. I am trying to get a handle on our office standards. Part of doing that is to try and use as much out of the box as possible and keeping with the AIA layer standards.

I have always used CTB for plotting. I am just now trying to learn about STB for the first time so please be patient here.

In the past, I would change things like a wall styles layer key style and display properties to conform to my CTB in order for it to plot the correct lineweights.

I want to be able to leave everything alone as much as possible and use STB. I want to use the AIA layers that ALL objects come in on as they are so that our office can use 100% of the out of the box objects and me not have to worry about changing each style to print properly.

So I am going to make office standard wall, door, window, etc. styles which will mostly be out of the box styles. I also want people to be able to use the detail components.  Some editing will take place but only in design, not layer key styles or display. I guess basically what I'm asking is this, is it possible to get things to plot the way I want without having to change anything about them, using a STB plot style and leaving all objects alone to exist on there AIA layers?

I know this is a very broad question and I will provide whatever I can to get an answer. I'm just trying to understand STB and exactly how I can use it to my advantage.

Thanks again,

Ryan

[pendean]

Why not spend a day actually using STBs at work: its the best way to answer your questions: you are in a way comparing apples and oranges and its best explained with actual usage.

Short answer: there is a learning curve.

[BrockJRW]

That's exactly what i'm trying to do but i'm having a hard time finding anything that give me a good understanding of how they work and how to set them up.

[BrockJRW]

So lets start at the basics here and help me get an understanding. From what I've read, it sounds like i can have a layer or an object's lineweight controlled by the style I assign to it from the STB styles?

How will this work if i bring in an out of the box detail and I don't like the way that detail is printing? Say i need to adjust some of the layers within that detail so that they plot thinner. Do I either, change the specific layer within that object to the style that is in my STB?  Then say I get that detail looking that way i want it to look. How can I then make sure that everyone in my office that brings in that detail has it print the same way. Do I instead keep the layers and key style the same default layers and instead change the STB to print the layers within that object that way I want. That way everyone can use that same detail without having to change anything about the detail itself.

I'm really struggling to grasp the relationship between the layers & objects and the STB file.

Thanks

[David_W_Koch]

STBs (named plot styles) work the same as CTBs (color-dependent styles) with the exception of how they are applied.  Color-dependent plot styles are assigned by color; named plot styles are assigned as an independent property.  An object can be assigned either a color or a plot style directly, by layer or, for nested objects (in a block or an AEC component) by block.

Both CTBs and STBs give you the option to assign lineweights in the drawing or in the plot style.  Lineweights assigned in the plot style take precedence over anything set in the drawing.  Using STBs frees you to use color as color, and not have to worry about how that will affect plotting.

[pendean]

Here is a simplistic example to get you over that hump:

Do you assign linetypes by object or by layer? You do the same with STBs if you switch. Linewieghts defined in an STB are assigned to the object and/or the layer (and your objects are 'bylayer'. Screen color is totally ignored.

Is there a reason you want to take on this mountain? Just curious since there is nothing wrong with still using TCBs or STBs, they are both here to stay (AFAIK).

[BrockJRW]

Thank you for all the input. I'm processing all of it now but i wanted to take a second and answer the last question first here.

I'm taking on this mountain of a task as part of implementing new office standards along with our recent upgrade to ACA 2013. Honestly I had no intentions of changing until the trainer we had "highly recommended" that we change. I guess accroding to him using CTB is on it's way out. 

I guess the biggest help and probably the first question I should have asked, is going from CTB to STB going to make my life as a CAD manager easier. As I said earlier, I want to be able to use as much as I can out of the box and leave the layers alone but have our office have consistant product going out.

Right now I leave the layers alone except for a few layer key changes. If I need to change the weight of a layer I change the CTB file by changing that color that i'm not happy with and adjusting it's wieght there. All colors that are used for plotting are using pen 7 except for the shades of course.

So.....will changing to STB make my life easier?

[pendean · Accepted solution]

No, it's not the path to making 'life easier': for that, you should consider sticking with CTBs. You're now committed to training your users extensively, and following up, plus keeping in touch (and monitoring output conformance to your standards) until they complete the transition.

After everyone else 'gets it', your cad manager duties should fall back to where they've always been so far.

[BrockJRW]

Thank you!!

After reading all of this and realizing that I should have started this thread simply asking what the advantages are if any I have decided to just stick with CTB's. I was under the impression that STB's would, in the long run, make our lives easier but that doesn't sound like the case.

So, that's one big hurdle out of the way. Now to move on down the list.

Thanks again. I really appreciate your input and having a place like this to come get answers and opinions.

RW

[David_W_Koch]

---

@ashevillebew wrote:

So.....will changing to STB make my life easier?

---

That will depend on how your life is now.  You mention upgrading to ACA 2013.  From what release, and what program are you coming?  Are you coming from a previous version of ACA?  If so, are you already using ACA content, the Display System, etc.?  If so, is your use of CTB-based drawings causing any problems for you?  If not, then changing to STBs may not make your life easier, and to the extent that your users have difficulty with the transition (which really is not that big of a deal, since you can set up an STB file that works the way your current CTB file works), it may, as Dean mentions, make your life temporarily less easy.

As I previously mentioned, the only advantage of STB over CTB is that it breaks the link between color and plotting.  If you never use color for anything other than plotting control, then switching to STB will leave you more or less where you are now.  If you have users that are complaining that they cannot use certain colors when trying to plot a "hybrid" drawing that needs both black and color plotting (for example, a floor plan with the usual black lines plus color fills to designate the departments to which various rooms belong) because the colors they want are used for plotting linework in black (or screened black), then changing to STB may may your life easier on that front.

[BrockJRW]

Life is pretty easy now with CTB's. I have used them for 14 years and I understand how they work and how to get the to do what I need. We upgraded from 2004 Desktop. We have been using the content and the displays as well. The use of CTB's has not been causing any problems but I was under the impression that using STB's would make it easier to use the ACA content out of the box without having to change anything.

We do occsionally plot both black & white and color together. I have 8 colors that we typically use for "color" plotting and I can easily make more if needed. I would say that 90% of our drawings are just black and white.

I am going to just stick with CTB's and still use as much ACA content as we can. I imagine that our CTB file will be evolving more though as I'll have to adjust it when an ACA object that has different layers is used that we might not have seen in the previous version. But that will hopefully just be a CTB adjustment to get the plotting where we want.

[David_W_Koch]

2004 was the last major overhaul of layers, colors, display and content settings.  So if you were working well with CTBs in 2004, you should be able to continue doing so in 2013 without a lot of pain.  One thing that did change in between - in 2004, the content was set up to allow use of either CTB or STB, with lineweight set in either the drawing or the plot style file.  In more recent releases, the assumption is that lineweight is set in the drawing, allowing the STB file to be greatly simplified.  If you want to be able to control lineweight in the plot style file (for example, to allow the same drawing to be plotted with different sets of lineweights), then there may be some effort involved in getting any new content to work the way you want.  But if you are starting out with your existing CTB file(s), then that should also be minimal, since you have the lineweights set there already.  The major issue would be if ACA uses a color for something that you have set up in your CTB file for a different purpose.

[mikeshick]

I know this thread is a bit old, but just to share my own experience.  I've used CTB files for 16 years, mostly in the civil arena.  About 2-3 years ago, I grew tired of not being able to have more colors at my disposal without affecting plot.  So, I made the jump.  After using them for 2-3 years, I must say that I love being able to select whatever color I want, but I hate having to select 3 different properties to define how a layer will plot.  CTB was by far more efficient and now I am considering returning to CTB.  I also use ACA to do a good deal of Structural work and some architectural work.  I am not eager to switch back, but I do despise picking 3 different elements every time I need to change properties of layer.  I say 3 properties get changed because I still like seeing darker colors to reflect lines with greater amounts of shading.  I do think color plotting is far easier with STB, but I just don't do much color plotting, as of yet.

Any thoughts?

[David_W_Koch]

We switched to STB plotting when we went all-in on ACA (back then, ADT), when we moved to the 2004 release. (Well, the architects, interior designers and structural engineers did. The other engineers moved a little more slowly but have gotten there now, more or less.) I would not willingly go back. I do not do much color plotting,but others in my firm do. Layer generation is automated, so no one who is following the office standard is creating many layers manually. Our standard layers maintain a relationship between color and lineweight, so that is not totally lost. I really do not miss trying to remember or constantly looking up how each of 255 colors plots, or participating in multi-dicipline negotiations over how each color should plot. That said, for b+w plotting, you can do the same things with either plot style type. I just prefer to work without the tyrrany of color = plot style.

[mikeshick]

My drafting and design days began in the survey and civil arena (via AutoCAD w/ Softdesk, then LDT, then C3D).  Later, I incorporated structural and architectural via ADT 2004.  Ironically, it was my work in the structural and architectural environment that prompted me to go STB.  The CTB schedule we used was extremely easy to remember!  We based the color pen thickness by the by the 1's place, ie. 10 was thicker than 11 thicker than 12 thicker than 43, etc.  and starting over at 100.  Shading was defined by the number in the 10's place.  1-9 had zero screening, 10-19 had 10% screening, 20-29  had 20% screening, 40-41 had 40% screening.  We repeated this for  number 100-249, and had special cases for 250-259.  Once you got the hang of it, it was awesome.....except by the time we entered the architectural arena, I found myself wanting more colors to choose from, since most of the color we would use were the primary 1-09.  We were limited by color.  Not that we made the switch, our color schemes on computer and our leverage is greater, and there really is very little overhead to work with it.

However, in civil 3D world, that's another story.  Constantly creating new objects that utilize different layers for different objects, ie -alignment-10th st, -alignment-L st, etc...produces a myriad of layers that need continual layer adjustment...and every project has multiple objects with that reference multiple layers that all need to be set with every creation.  What adds to the inefficiency of this is that new object layers do not carry the properties of the base layers from which the object created the layers.  Additionally, when modifying the layer properties of several layers at once, you can select them and change their plot style, but if you also want to change their lineweight, you have to reselect the layers again.  The original selection does not hold after one of the properties is set.  So, to change the 3 properties of a group of layers at one time, I have to select them after every property change.  Kind of a pain!

Lastly, and somewhat unrelated, is the layer filter limitation.  Though layer filters work great, they can only be accessed through the layer manager...which after several years of implementation is still somewhat sluggish, especially when left open and switching between different drawings.  So, in order to change layer filters, you must either leave the layers tool palette open all the time, or continually open and close it to access the filters.

In my ctb days, I had a lisp routine I'd use to open a color chart to change the color of a layer, and within a couple of seconds, had my color, plotsytle, and thickness set.  It was awesome.  Granted, that was not changing layers assigned due to styles, but the process was surely quicker.

So, all that to say, I really wish autodesk would build a layer filter switcher option into the ribbon for quick access, rather than opening layer tp for every switch, that the layer tp would work without dragging when switching between dwg's, that in C3D, new layes properties for objects would be based on their base layers, and finally, that when changing the properties of multiple layers, the selection would stick until pressing esc or closing the tp.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for sharing back 🙂

[mikeshick]

Further trouble with STB is that not all objects have a plotstyle property, i.e. basic autocad dimension sytles.  The extension line does not have a plotsytle so defaults to the parent object layer.  I loved being able to shade the extension lines and darken the dimension line, text, and arrows.

Civil 3D has many objects (especially labels) that do not have plot style properties either, which can be slightly confusing and problematic.

I actually think that I may go backwards and reimplement CTB plotting.

[jlpeterson]

David, admittedly this is a reply to a relatively old post, but I was wondering if you would be willing to share your firm's standard "relationship between color and lineweight"?  I am making the transition to STB based printing within my firm, and would like to derive a 'best practices' for color use (in light of STB's color freedom.)  Right now I am thinking something on the order of:

Colors  -  Pen Weights

10, 11, 20, 21, 30, 31, etc.  -> .40 and greater

12, 13, 22, 23, 32, 33, etc.  -> .30

14, 15, 24, 25, 34, 35, etc.  -> .20 - .25

16, 17, 26, 27, 36, 37, etc.  -> .09 - .18 

Thanks,

Jason

[David_W_Koch]

I will not state that we follow this in every case, but in general we follow what was included in a combination of the US National CAD Standard (Version 2), and the ACA 2004 out-of-the-box lineweight assignments for colors from 10 to 249.

Colors ending in 0 - full intensity, 0.18 mm [Fine]

Colors ending in 1 - full intensity, 0.25 mm [Thin]

Colors ending in 2 - full intensity, 0.35 mm [Medium]

Colors ending in 3 - full intensity, 0.50 mm [Wide]

Colors ending in 4 - full intensity, 0.70 mm [Extra Wide]

Colors ending in 5 - full intensity, 1.00 mm [Moderate Bold] [XX Wide in more recent versions of the US NCS]

Colors ending in 6 - full intensity, 1.40 mm [Bold] [XXX Wide in more recent versions of the US NCS]

Colors ending in 7 - halftone, 0.35 mm [Medium]

Colors ending in 8 - halftone, 0.70 mm [Extra Wide]

Colors ending in 9 - full intensity, 2.00 mm [Extra Bold] [XXXX Wide in more recent versions of the US NCS]

We rarely use anything over 0.70 mm, although we do assign 1.40 mm to layer 0 to make it very obvious when someone has left main object linework on that layer.  That avoids the issue of colors ending in 8 or 9 being to dark to see on a dark background [and difficult to distinguish from one another].

For the record, the 1.00 mm, 1.40 mm and 2.00 mm lineweights were added to Version 2 via amendment, and were not originally assigned descriptive names.  "Moderate Bold," "Bold" and "Extra Bold" were used by the 2004 out-of-the-box plot style file [AIA Standard.stb].  The "XX Wide," "XXX Wide" and "XXXX Wide" descriptive names were added in a later version, as was a 0.13 mm "Extra Fine".  The US Coast Guard Plotting Guidelines on which the above was based have since been removed from the US NCS, which no longer tries to tie color to lineweight.

[jlpeterson]

Hm, seems to be the opposite of what I was thinking.  Thanks for the insight, David.