Hi John,
My apologies for taking so long to come back to the forum to follow-up on your last post. Basically, I have been so busy with other parts of one project that I haven't been able to spend much time trying to figure out plotting.
Working with the basic AutoCAD drawing, I am having success turning layers off in individual viewports. I think the key is changing the layer settings while in model space while in an individual viewport.
Maybe I should start a new thread about plotting. I'll make a couple statements in this thread, and you can let me know if it would be better to start a new thread.
I am having a tough time plotting with transparencies. The time it takes to plot with transparencies versus the time it takes to not plot with transparencies is significant. For the 100 MB drawing I mentioned, it will plot to .pdf in a couple of minutes. If I attempt to plot to .pdf with plot transparencies checked, it takes so long that after 10 or 15 minutes I just terminate the plot.
I know the drawing size is unusually large. It also has hundreds of layers. The problem is that I receive drawings like this from my customer to use as base drawings. I would like to plot most of the layers as transparencies. If I try to do that and then plot the drawings, the time is too great.
My customer has asked me to replot a large number of drawings because the detail that I add gets lost in the original drawing detail. I'm thinking that there must be an easier way to do this.
I think I will try screening/dithering; but, I will need to go back and change the colors for most of the work I have done, just so it's different from all the other colors in the drawing.
I would really like to use the plot transparency. I just don't think it will work properly given the size of the drawings.
Any thoughts?
(Sorry again that it too me so long to get back to you.)
Take Care,
Jeff