Publishing in the background in Civil 3D 2026

[brandycolon2799]

I recently had my team download Civil 3D 2026. We are all having problems publishing to PDF in the background. When my team sends a job to publish using the Batch Plot command

Everything seems to work as normal and there are no warning messages in the Plot and Publish details, but no file is created anywhere. It also says the plot is completed way too quickly. I am the only one who can publish to PDF in the background, but I have a warning: Incompatible or missing CTB file when my PDF is complete.

My PDF is in color and not reading or implementing my CTB file. My team and I can all publish in the foreground (Publish in the Background dialog box unchecked) with no problems, and my CTB file works, but it can take a large project an hour or more, and I lose production time.

I have checked my folder paths, and they are correct. Everyone puts the CTB file on their local path (C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\AutoCAD <version>\<release No>\enu\Plotters\Plot Styles).

C:\Users\colonb\AppData\Roaming\Autodesk\C3D 2026\enu\Plotters\Plot Styles

I check my drawing file (every drawing file we open in 2026 cannot be plotted in the background) is not corrupt. I even created a new CTB file and got the same message when using the background publishing option.

When not using the background publishing the PDF is created without any problems, only takes too much time. 

I have combed through the help and cannot find a solution. I am hoping that maybe the community might know. I would also like to mention that we did not have any of these issues in Civil 3D 2025. I have continued to use 2025 for that reason.

Thanks,

Brandy Colon

[user181]

Do you by chance have Autocad also installed along with Civil 3D on the computer that says missing ctb file? If so you need to set all the same plot paths as the civil 3d version because if you have both installed it will use the plain autocad settings instead of civil 3d for background publishing. 

[jsloanTX3CG]

Brandy, did you figure this out?

2026 does not want to publish in the background, only the foreground.

We do not have issues with 2024 or 2025 - Just 2026.

All .ctbs and plot settings are the same between years. seems like something is faulty with 2026.

[brandycolon2799]

Interesting. Yes, I do have AutoCAD installed. I'll give that a try.

[brandycolon2799]

No, I have not found a solution yet. I do have 2025 still installed on my computer and have been using that version to batch plot for now. I have advised all my teams to do the same for now. My suspicion is that it's a problem with the 2026 version, so I'm waiting for a patch to come out.

[brandycolon2799]

 -User181 - Wow, that actually worked. I added my .ctb file to all of my Autodesk product file locations for the "Plot Styles" folder. I had downloaded the entire AEC collection. This also makes it so that I can batch plot in the background in Civil 3D 2026 without any issues. I will be testing the rest of my teams account early next week and will confirm if this fixes their issues as well. They were not able to batch plot at all, whereas I was able to batch plot but had errors. I'll keep my fingers crossed. 🙂