Plot Style Management

[DMFACER]

How many Plot Styles do you manage? 

I'm trying to reduce the number of Plot Styles our company uses to what I think is a manageable number, but I want to make sure I'm not being unrealistic.  I think we should be able to run with 2-3 Plot Styles internally, plus any client Plot Styles that we have to use for specific projects. The CAD standards I inherited from my predecessor currently have a separate plot style for each type of sheet we plot ("Site Plan" style, "Grading Plan" style, "Utility Plan" style......).  I know it can be simplified. 

Any thoughts?

[gwhite]

I use only one stb plot style. It has selections for black, 0 through 90 percent screening (in 10 percent intervals), and color from 10 percent to 100 percent. It is more than adequate for any situation. Linetypes and lineweights for entities, layers are included in our standards. Items not covered by standards are assigned linetypes and lineweights to create a pleasing and readable final document.

[pendean]

CTB or STB?

What settings make each plot style table you have unique? That might explain why you have so many.

[DMFACER]

They are all CTB.  My plan is to move to STB, which is what I've used at past employers, and that should eliminate most of the problem.  I think the bigger issue is going to be convincing the users this is a better system, and that some user control of the lineweights and way things plot is better than a preset, but overcomplicated, system.

[idmadcadder]

STB is the way to go.  I'm sure you can find lots of good pro and con lists on here discussing it.  We use one plot style with 5 defined widths, then 3 screening percentages of each of those, along with Black, and a White.  So less then 25 styles in the plot style table itself.  I don't agree with leaving it open for users to set their own line widths, there are just too many, and that makes the plans look very inconsistent.  Better to define a bunch, and have them use them and keep all the line widths on Default in the layers...in my opinion.

[pendean]

I'm curious about this legacy setup you are wanting to change (for good reasons): for example, is RED a different width setting in each of the CTB plot style tables? Or does each CTB plot style table add-a-color or something similar the others do not?

Or is it simply a scaling lineweights issue: an aerial is different from a 1:1 of a nail head for example, so you have a plot style table for each.

[DMFACER]

In the current system, "RED" is a different lineweight in each CTB file, mostly to accomodate moving certain things to background, or making certain things darker depending on the sheet.  We are doing Civil projects, and many of our objects appear on multiple sheets, so this is how the previous CAD Manager solved the problem.  The fact that RED is a different lineweight in each CTB is making it difficult to combine them into one STB file.

[pendean]

That my friend is what I suspected: you have multiple CTBs to accommodate multiple lineweight settings based on plot scales. It's not a bad system that is in place IMHO, just complicated.

While you wait here, you might want to tap your Civil peers in their dicusssion area about what they do inhouse to manage the same needs you have:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/AutoCAD-Civil-3D/bd-p/66

[ACADuser]

---

@recaF wrote:

In the current system, "RED" is a different lineweight in each CTB file, mostly to accommodate moving certain things to background, or making certain things darker depending on the sheet.  We are doing Civil projects, and many of our objects appear on multiple sheets, so this is how the previous CAD Manager solved the problem.  The fact that RED is a different lineweight in each CTB is making it difficult to combine them into one STB file.

---

That seems to be a very good way to deal with the need to have objects plot differently depending on the type of plan.  However complicated it may be, converting over to a single plot style will present some challenges.  Convincing those that are used to "knowing" how something will plot based on color and the plotstyle table used will be the most challenging aspect of converting to a single STB.

Also keep in mind that some companies will use several STB's.  One instance would be because of the difference in output from one plotter/printer to the next.  So you may need several STB's depending on the number of plotters and how critical you are of the final output.  Also It's common for civil drawings to be printed "half size".  Depending on how your sheets are set up and your preferences for lineweight display you may need more than one STB for this reason as well. 

Good Luck !

[idmadcadder]

You might consider this a good time to overhaul your page setups too.  Create them for different sized sheets and utilize the Scale Lineweights option in the page setup for halfsize and letter plots.  Utilize .pdf and .dwf plotting, then plot those to halfsize, this will automatically scale the lineweights.  Or maybe you have plotter software that will do this.  There are other options besides creating multiple .stb files.  Just something to think about.

[BernardMadoff]

We use to have 2 when we used colour to define printed line thickness - 1 for colour printing and 1 for black and white printing.

We now use line weight to define printed line thickness and only use true colours (colour books) for colour work so now only use 1 plot style (ctb)

1 plot style for each type of sheet sounds like your predecessor was using different plot styles to change the plotted line thickness for different drawing scales.

although this method is quick and works its problematic when sharing that data with third parties and clients who will not want to receive multiple plot styles and have to use these to print your data correctly.

we use level overrides to control and change plotted line thickness for different drawing scales hence we only need 1 plot style