Linetypes of Xref drawing misbehaving when plotting

[rfazio708529]

Good day all.

I have just upgraded to Civil 3D 2018 and am now having an issue I can not figure out.

I have a plan sheet in Paper space. Everything looks great but when I plot or preview the plot it is changing my lintypes of the surface contours to solid lines.

If i look at it in model space and paper space the lines are dashed.

This only happens when I go to plot the layout.

I have attached an image of the paper space view and a pdf showing the plot output.

[tedg]

Don't know for sure, and I don't work with civil 3d but right off the top of my head:

Are you plotting 1:1 in PS? (was wondering about scaling lineweights?)

Also check your PS variables:
PSLTSCALE = 1
LTSCALE = 1
CANNOSCALE = 1:1

you say it looks right in PS but not plotting right?
I'm not sure of any of that helps.

[Tom Beauford]

Dashed lines looked the same, trees along the bottom and what appears to be revision cloud or tree line plotted much better than it looked in the image. What is the linetype definition for the contours that isn't showing up? Could it be the Display resolution settings on the Display tab of Options?

[rfazio708529]

Tom. the contours are set to a simple dashed lintype. I have tried changing the linetype and it did not matter.

What display tab of Options are your referring to.

- - - Updated - - -

Ted,

All settings are as you stated. This is definately a civil 3D 2018 issue. Same lintypes same layout set up in 2017 worked just fine.

[Tom Beauford]

Tom. the contours are set to a simple dashed lintype. I have tried changing the linetype and it did not matter.

What display tab of Options are your referring to.

Display is the second tab in Options. Is your Display resolution settings same as: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/suppo...D9B73-htm.html

Still wouldn't explain the fact that linetypes look terrible in the image compared to the PDF.

I think it's your graphics card and those contours aren't dashed at all. Enter GRAPHICSCONFIG and check the Tuner Log. Does it say "The card and driver meets the recommended requirement."?

[rfazio708529]

I think you are missing my point. The screen shot from Civil 3D is what is should look like. (dashed lines for the contours) The PDF attached is showing what they look like in plot preview and when plotted. I have tried with four different plotters and the same results. Solid lines instead of dashed on the surface contours.

All display setting are the same as you suggested and the graphics card meet the recommended requirement. This has not been a issue until Civil 3D 2018 Everything worked fine in 2017. And it is only a problem when the surface is xrefed into another drawing. It works fine in the drawing where the surface was created.

[david.zavislan345085]

We have encountered a similar issue with Civil 3D 2017. We have traced the cause to using reference styles in drawings that are attached as xrefs. It appears that Civil 3D is unable to correctly read or apply reference styles when the drawing is externally referenced.

We removed style references from all xref drawings and this problem went away.

[jminta]

Re: Linetypes of Xref drawing misbehaving when plotting

I was having the same issue with the line type not plot previewing or plotting correctly. My co-working suggested checking the line type the surface is on, when I did, that line type was set to continuous. Once I changed the line type to dashed2, it plot previewed and plotted correctly. So, to sum up, make sure the line type that your surface is on is the one you want it to plot.

[Sportyyyy]

This doesn't address your issue, but I think these are good practices that will help keep Civil 3D problems to a minimum:

1. Never XREF a Civil 3D object; always use data shortcuts. This will make for a lot more DWG files, but not extra time. You will save time by reducing potential problems.
2. Think of the files where the Civil 3D object is created as "DWG files". These files are not "drawings"; they are tools to create Civil 3D objects. Drawings are created from other DWG files.
3. Never XREF Civil 3D labels. Only create Civil 3D labels in the DWG file used to create final drawings.

#1, #2 & #3 are all 180° different from what I've been told, read, and experienced since 2008 (including the Civil 3D Best Practices guides). Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but you're recommending users never xref a file contains data references?