Survey: Who uses WYSIWIG for Layer Colors?

[mrbbq1965]

I am curious as to how many of you out there have company CAD standards that use WYSIWYG for layer colors, (What You See Is What You Get). By this I mean drawing everything existing as Color 252, and everything Proposed as Color 7?

Thanks for your replies.

Max J. Lorenz II
Technical Designer III
Civil 3D 2010

[Anonymous]

We use

1 to 9 as black of different line weights

10 - 249 as wysiwyg colour with a weight of 0.3

250 - 255 as wysiwug greyscale (for solid fill hatch)

It gives maximum flexability for all our users regardless of discipline.

We dont draw proposed as 1 colour & existing as another. we have 2 models, 1 for proposed & 1 for existing. So at a layer/entity level, a wall is a wall in both drawings, not proposed or existing. Only the file name shows the difference.

But we own the lifecyle of the building, so whats proposed today will be existing tommorow & this methodology makes it faster to change drawings from proposed to existing.

[omc-usnr]

There was a fairly long post over in the C3d forum about using stb or ctb. Having grown up with technical pens & plotters with an 8 pen carousel, I have always used ctb plot files.

Colors 1 - 8 are black, .18mm through 1.0mm

After that, I use different colors for different utilities, both existing and proposed, with much of the existing being in the greys (250-255). Works well for me, lets me know what utility I'm dealing with by color, and if I need width, I can use polylines.

When shipping drawings to clients or team members, they get a copy of the ctb file, and the shape files for text.

Reid

[Anonymous]

I use stb - any color, any line weight, any screen for any entity. I can
make my drawings look exactly as I desire without any compromises and
including the stb plotstyle with transfer of drawings allows anyone else to
do so, too.

wrote in message
news:6358296@discussion.autodesk.com...
I am curious as to how many of you out there have company CAD standards that
use WYSIWYG for layer colors, (What You See Is What You Get). By this I
mean drawing everything existing as Color 252, and everything Proposed as
Color 7?

Thanks for your replies.

Max J. Lorenz II
Technical Designer III
Civil 3D 2010

[Anonymous]

I used to. The color on screen was the color that plotted. Walls were
red, doors were blue, etc. Now the only time I see color is on a
presentation plan.

On 3/22/2010 5:52 AM, mrmax007@bellsouth.net wrote:
> I am curious as to how many of you out there have company CAD standards that use WYSIWYG for layer colors, (What You See Is What You Get). By this I mean drawing everything existing as Color 252, and everything Proposed as Color 7?
>
> Thanks for your replies.
>
> Max J. Lorenz II
> Technical Designer III
> Civil 3D 2010
>

--
Anthony Mason
http://dailyoccurrence.wordpress.com/

[AllenJessup]

In the way-back when we had colored felt pens in a carousel for plotting check plots we did. Each color represented a line weight in the final plot.
Sine we are mainly doing construction plans and survey maps most of our final plots are black and white. I have a CTB set to control the line weight by layer so it doesn't matter what color the entities are on the screen except for a small range set aside if we want to show a few colors. There are separate CTBs for color presentation and mapping.
For WYSIWYG we have the PS background set to white and Display Plot Styles checked in the Page Setup Manager. We also have line weights set to display. This give a very good representation of what the plot will look like. It's also very important when we do county wide color maps. We often have a color to plot at 20 or 30% shading. So the only place you'll get a good idea of how that color will plot is in PS.
Allen

[ACADuser]

Most of our drawings are printed in gray monochrome. For black and white plots I couldn't imagine any benefits from having all of the entities on the screen being monochrome.

For those drawings that are plotted in color, we do use a WYSIWYG approach. The only problem is AutoCad can not display dithered colors on screen so they are not truly WYSIWYG. Our template is setup to use an stb plotstyle table and all of the lineweights are specified in the drawing rather than the plotstyle table. No matter what color is used in the drawing, users have the option to select from several plot styles depending on their need. The styles available are;
Normal, prints the color as specified in the drawing (Autodesk default, settings can not be changed)
100% - Color, settings are the same as "Normal"
90% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 90
80% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 80
70% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 70
60% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 60
50% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 50
40% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 40
30% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 30
20% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 20
10% - Color, settings same as "Normal" with screening set to 10
Solid - Color, settings same as "Normal" with dither set to off

If a user wants something to plot as red, they would choose whatever color red they want then choose the style depending on the desired effect. BTW the gray monochrome styles are very similar to the above color styles and are all contained in the same plotstyle table as the color styles.

[Anonymous]

Using good old Acad.ctb right out of the box, setting lineweights to layers, WYSIWYG has no special pens and nothing to guess - this allows you to concentrate on your work - all objects are set to properties bylayer. any AutoCAD user can work on a drawing without wasting project budgets researching and guessing how someone started a drawing.

with 40 years in the business i been there and done that - WYSIWYG rocks. Focus on Design, not researching pen settings.

Regards
David Lawrence

[Anonymous]

Prior to my current employment, I always used ctb files and my drawings were always in color. Let’s face it if you’re working on a drawing in model space and you have a lot of different layers you need to see at the same time, it’s easier to have different colors set to those layers. I did have an instance with a color blind user that required me to change some of the colors I had chosen, to accommodate his condition.

Since my current employment I have been using the WYSIWYG style. The transition for me at first seemed as though it would be difficult. However my concerns were basically a mental switch and a reluctance to change what I was already comfortable doing. I believe the WYSIWYG style is straight forward, easy to use and learn. From a company’s point of view It seems as though it would be the obvious choice as it would be less complicated of a solution and very simple to implement!

Roger

[ssx_Autodesk]

personally, i've started doing some drafting on my own where i'm trying out this theory (i feel its fairly radical and would be open to suggestions):

Black/White vs Color
for this i decided to split the Index Color diagram into the top/bottom halves - the top (or even numbered) colors all print in black and the bottom colors (the odd numbered ones) print their color. (i've also got the True Colors if the odd colors don't satisfy something, but now at least i've got a pretty even split in the first dialog of the Color Section dialog).

Lineweights
the lineweights are the big switch. i've decided that the colors ending in 0 are my heaviest (or primary, or cut-thru) lines. so colors 10, 20, 30, etc all have the same heavy thickness. from there, i gradually decrease the thickness as i go higher in the diagram, so the colors ending in 2 are the next thinnest (12, 22, 23, etc). continuing on, the colors ending in 8 are the thinnest (18, 28, 38 etc) and also the darkest.

using this method helps users that might not be familiar with a particular color scheme with understanding which lines are heavy (the bright ones) and which lines are thin (the darker ones). the drawing would simply read based on the brightness of the colors.

[mdhutchinson]

I wonder if it is possible to have a ctb file ... or perhaps two.

We are slowly migrating over to having all drawings printed in color...

Our local print shop from where we get our support for our KIP has said that there has been somewhat of a switch in the industry (mechanical piping and some sheetmetal HVAC) to more drawings printed in color.

The initial thoughts is to have one ctb that would print the drawing in color, and one to print the drawing in black and white.

Both ctb files should use the same lineweight settings... this way you can print the drawing in color or in black and white and the output would be just as easy to read either way.

owen66 has the approach I think is good... but I am not certain it fits with mine.

[rkmcswain]

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mdhutchinson wrote:

The initial thoughts is to have one ctb that would print the drawing in color, and one to print the drawing in black and white.

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I think this was mentioned... but in case not....

Keep in mind that you can keep on using a B/W ctb file and if you need a few layers to show up in color, just change the layer color to a TrueColor, which are not affected by plot style tables and always plot WYSIWYG.