AutoCAD 2018 Plotting Issue

[Anonymous]

We have recently updated from AutoCAD Architecture 2012 to 2018, but since it's simply a plotting issue I figured it'd be more likely to receive a response much sooner here. In the 2012 version our electrical blocks would plot to black & white just fine using our .stb plot style. However, in 2018 some blocks print in the layer color. I exploded the blocks that weren't printing correctly and noticed that certain lines/shapes of the block were saved as either by layer or by block (I didn't create them so I'm unsure as to why this was done). After changing everything to bylayer, it seemed to print fine. But I was looking for a way to override this without having to do this for all of our projects since it worked in 2012. Also as a side note I tried test plotting within model space and all prints to black & white, so I know it's something within the paperspace that's causing the problem.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

[leothebuilder]

My suggestion would be to open these problem blocks in the block editor and change all the geometry to later 0 (zero)

Entities within blocks should never be set to a certain layer in my opinion. Always layer 0 (zero) whenever possible.

Now insert these blocks into you drawing on the desired layer.

As long as this layer has been assigned a plot style per your Stb all should be fine.

[David_W_Koch · Accepted solution]

Have you installed the AutoCAD Architecture 2018.0.1 Update (and the AutoCAD 2018.0.2 Update)?  The AutoCAD Architecture update was supposed to address issues with plotting AEC content in external references when object attributes (like Color) were set to ByLayer (which may or may not be your issue here).

[Anonymous]

This did work, however we'd have to do this to every file we have the issue on whenever it ran just fine without having to do so on 2012. It seems David's suggestion to install the most recent update has fixed the problem. Even still, thanks for your response and I appreciate the help!

[Anonymous]

This seems to have done the trick! Thanks a bunch, greatly appreciated!