exporting to CAD, looking for CTB file to print.

[MedJohn]

When I export our REVIT file to ACAD for engineers & consultants who don't have REVIT, the program automatically places objects in it's own layer management. Has anyone created, or found a CTB (or CAD pen setting file) file for printing the exported files and actually have them look the way they did in REVIT. I've used good 'old monochrome setting before but of course all types of line weights are lost in the process.

-John

[Steve_Stafford]

When you export to dwg you should find that a matching .pcp file was created. this file can be used to make a .ctb file. The should be a wizard in AutoCAD to make one by selecting the .pcp file.

[MedJohn]

Steve,

We just tried your mentioned method but I would appear that the printing is further from normal that just using monochrome. Any ideas? Thanks for the post though. I appreciate your time.

-John

[Justin Marchiel]

you would have to create a ctb file from the pcp file. acad has a utility to make new ctb files from the pcp files. pcp files and pc2 files where used by autocadd before ctb or stb came around so there are many companies with legacy files that they need to switch over.

There cadd tech should be able to create the file, and if not he is not worth his money.

Justin

[Dinochrome]

Hello,

I'm looking for a way to export a .ctb file to a spreadsheet for ease of checking. Has anyone ever done this. I opened one up with notepad, but all I got was hieroglyphics...

Thanks,
Bill

[ron.sanpedro]

When I export our REVIT file to ACAD for engineers & consultants who don't have REVIT, the program automatically places objects in it's own layer management. Has anyone created, or found a CTB (or CAD pen setting file) file for printing the exported files and actually have them look the way they did in REVIT. I've used good 'old monochrome setting before but of course all types of line weights are lost in the process.

-John

John,
have your consultants actually asked for this? My experience thus far is that consultants Xref the DWG we provide (be it from Revit, or from AutoCAD/ADT when we used that) and then change the colors to their standards so they can use their CTB (as well as freezing a bunch of layers that don't pertain to them). When rolling out Revit we planned to configure the DWG export to convert everything to our office standard layers and colors, but we realized that this was really wasted effort. As long as the DWG is rational and consistent, and everything is Color ByLayer, then we are fine. And Revit generated DWGs are better than our human made DWGs in those respects.
Thus far I have never had a consultant ask to be able to see the DWG the way we see it, and when owners or contractors want that, we give them PDFs.

Best,
Gordon

[kpaxton]

When I export our REVIT file [...] the program automatically places objects in it's own layer management. -JohnI second what Steve has said regarding the CTB files and that approach. I would like to point out something, however trivial it may be. You are correct that the Revit program has a 'standard' way of exporting your Revit file to an AutoCAD DWG. However, you have the final say as you can create as many different types of export files as you have consultants.

Every element in Revit can be defined to a specific layer, color, etc. of your choosing - be this for your office standards or for a specific consultant's standards that you work with a lot. This is accomplished by using the interface provided under the Export dialogue, where you define the layer standards, and then save this to a separate text file. [SEE IMAGE]

Gordon has a valid point, in that a lot of consultants, will take your dwg file, and do their own manipulation on it - be it as an xref, or turning everything gray, or whatever. It's your choice and depends on if they need to manipulate your data at all for their needs.

Hope this helps,
Kyle

[JamesVan]

Hello,

I'm looking for a way to export a .ctb file to a spreadsheet for ease of checking. Has anyone ever done this. I opened one up with notepad, but all I got was hieroglyphics...

Thanks,
Bill
There's a free utility called TablePrint that will export a Plot Style Table to a comma-delimited file. See Shaan Hurley's blog (http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2005/04/updated_autocad.html).

[alex.129186]

Steve,

We just tried your mentioned method but I would appear that the printing is further from normal that just using monochrome. Any ideas? Thanks for the post though. I appreciate your time.

-John

I'm having the same problem. When I export to cad 2000 and plot, most of the lines plot out as halftone. I ran the wizard as suggested, used the pcp file that Revit created and made a ctb file. Did you get this to work?

Alex

[Justin Marchiel]

you have to make sure that the pen color in the ctb file is set to black. otherwise it will plot it as a colour and if you printer doesn't support color it will come out in greyscale.

Justin

[Joef]

What I do is set autoCAD to "print with plot styles" and use the monochrome ctb file with the all the colours set to black and the linetype and linestyle set to "use object ...". This means it will plot using the linestyle and lineweights that are set in the layers. These are set by Revit to mimic the look of your Revit drawing so things turn out looking pretty good.

Joe

[rmejia]

This might be helpful:

http://revitandstuff.blogspot.com/2006/12/import-pcp-files-from-revit-to-acad.html