Controlling CTB file intelligently

[ESchomberg]

Ok, friends, Last post for at least 2 days I promise, hehe. So I am re creating my CTB file to control lightness of certain objects (I lost my old one by not backing it up).

I understand the concept of assigning certain colors to certain line types, text fonts, and hatch patterns.

A) Do certain colors automatically come in lighter or darker than others when printing? If so, which colors come in lighter, and which darker?

B) Can I control the lightness of text fonts by assigning a lighter line weight to text fonts.

C) I typically control my line widths in my layers, but can you also lighten certain lines by using a CTB file? If so how?

D) I mainly like to control my hatch pattern lightness...I like (for example) my concrete hatch to be dense, but Light and soft (not overpowering). Is this

     done by setting hatch 'with a light lineweight' such as .05?

E) Can you use a combination of colors and lineweights to control how lines, Texts, and hatch come out on the printer?

[rl_jackson]

A: Yes and No, I would use the Monochrome CTB as it is OOTB the light and dark (i.e. regular or shaded can be controlled elsewhere)

B: For TTF Fonts NO on there look but as above you can control there "shading"

C: Look at the Grey Scale option.... This can be controlled with layers to via transparency, I personally still adjust the 250 -256 range for shading....

😧 Its an object therefore its perfectly OK to do it that way

E: To a certain degree.... TTF's always print as you see them on the screen with the exception of the shading, if you have an object that is on a layer that is set to be a certain weight by layer and you set your color to be a certain weight, the CTB can only be overrides the object. However if your CTB is set to by object your free to give the object whatever weight you desire....

[ESchomberg]

OK, Mr Jackson, you said something on the other post (privately) that got me thinking something that I have never even considered before. What I gathered and was shocked that I never even thought of this before is that: My CTB file that I have so diligently honed to my perfection, making my drawings look exactly the way I want them to look will come out looking completely different when my client prints it out, because he does not have my CTB file on his computer...... WOW, I feel a bit mentally handicapped about right now.

So if I am correct, using monochrome instead of a CTB will make my drawings print the same no matter who prints them?

[rl_jackson]

Attached is a file with some lines in the drawing. Do a print preview and all are different thickness based on the Monochrome OOTB CTB file.

EDIT: Look at the properties of each line.

[rl_jackson]

Yes if you set your line weights by layer/object.... that was the purpose of my quick little drawing.

[Joe-Bouza]

Here is my 2centsbon the topic

The ctb file allows for flexibility and stringent controls of line weights and intensity. For each color you can set by object or specific weight, intensity etc. you can go nuts mapping it all out and the next standardizing color choice.... blah blah blah blah....

For me color 1-249 weight by object and color black 100^
Color 250-254 weight by object color = wysiwyg
Now regardless of color your layer template sets the weight

And the grey tones are wysiwyg

[rl_jackson]

Attached is the same file with the last (bottom) being default which should take on what the layer default is....

Again this is just an option on how to do things so that your not shipping CTB/STB file from here to eternity.... Makes thinks simple if the layer is set to a line weight vs the CTB/STB controlling all of it and its still a standard cuz the DWT is set that way...

[MMcCall402]

We ditched the custom company CTB and went Monochrome about 3 years ago. Simple, easy and adaptable. No color decoder ring needed.

[ESchomberg]

Ok, this is a lot to take in at one time. I may be mistaken about his prints looking different than mine without having my CTB file because I have been printing to PDF and sending PDF files. So his prints probably look like mine. I am going to fine tune my CTB file, which is almost done, just so I can start sending him drawings again. However, from what I am gathering, If I were to send someone an actual dwg file and they printed it out, it would not look the same if they did not have my CTB file.

I would like to leave this post open for a bit until I can wrap my head around it. I am not familiar with the term OOTB even though I see it quite often, I am also not familiar with shading. I do somewhat know what greyscale is but not how to utilize it in the sense you are speaking of. Forgive my lack of computer knowledge. Until I downloaded autocad 2016 I knew nothing about a computer except how to turn it on and view a dating website. I feel frustrated whenever something goes astray but in actuality, whenever something goes wrong I seem to learn a lot more than when things are going good.

[rl_jackson]

OOTB=Out of the Box

[rl_jackson]

As a side note @ESchomberg  "Teach you we will" 

[sboon · Accepted solution]

All of your drawings use external files to produce what you see and print out.  Linetypes, fonts, hatch patterns, plot styles etc. are all examples of this behaviour.  Some people use only the stuff which is supplied by Autodesk OOTB, so that their work can be shared without a need to send those external files but that limits what you can do.

Autodesk created the ETRANSMIT command specifically to solve this problem.  The tool will search through your drawing, locate all of the external files that are necessary to display and print it properly, and package everything up into a zip file with a text document that explains what everything is.  Extremely useful if you're sending drawings to another CAD user who you haven't worked with previously.

Steve
Please use the Accept as Solution or Kudo buttons when appropriate

[Anonymous]

In agreement with Steve,  If I don't have a supplied template drawing and plot style file from the client, I would etransmit my product so that they have all necessary files.  Also supplying a pdf file for certain projects helps too.  My firm does a lot of topographic work for developers and engineers and they would include our surveys in their plan sets for existing conditions, so the pdf is a good option for them to have our product look as intended.

[ChrisRS]

With regard to sharing drawings out side your company, etransmit will include your CTB file. I twill not make the other persons understand how to use it. 

[ESchomberg]

Lmao

[ESchomberg]

I forgot about etransmit...

[ChrisRS]

@sboon, sorry i missed your reply. Did not mean to duplicate it.

[sboon]

That's actually hilarious.  You provided the necessary information to add the correct dose of snark, by accident.

Steve
Please use the Accept as Solution or Kudo buttons when appropriate

[ChrisRS]

Yeah. If I had seen your post I would have thought it, but I probably would not have posted it stand alone.

[ESchomberg]

I just tried etransmit, to send files to cad tech support....It starts to do it then gives me an error message "transmittal creation failed". I can not win for losing