Difference b/w stb and ctb

[jmyers.67919]

We have always used ctb files to plot our drawings, so I know very little about stb files. We got a drawing from a client where they use stb file to plot with.

1. Can someone explain stb's to me?

2. Can you plot a drawing that was setup to use and stb with a ctb file? How is that done? It appears that there are no options for that in the plotting menus.

Thanks for your help!

J.D.

[RobertB]

STB's are name-based plot styles. So the way an object plots depends not on color, but what plot style is applied to it. Name-based plot styles are usually applied via the Layer Manager, butcan be applied on a per-object basis (which leads to the same issues as per-object colors <blech>).

You can toggle what type of plot style a drawing uses with the ConvertPStyles command.

[MHultgren]

Where you can really see an application of STb files is when you have an existing topo and you want to plot some of it as a demo and some as existing to remain. the same file can be plotted with different settings by applying a different plot style to that layer or entities. It doesn't change the way it looks on screen (unless you have WYSIWYG turned on) but it plots differently. For example (in the Civil realm) we have water lines, sewer lines and storm drain lines in our base file. We set up the sheets for each utility and apply that Plot style to set the way the layers plot. This takes some STRICT adherance to standards but it sure makes plotting the sheet sets easier for us (in-house). We can script out the plot sets thanks to some lisp we picked up in the Lisp Forum and apply the Named plot style dependant on the folder name. Where they really start to pay off is the Plot\nonplot settings. We have our titleblocks set up with the Water Plan, Sewer Plan and Storm Drain Plan on separate layers and those are changed to Nonplot by selecting the Named plot style you want. For example, in the Water.stb the SSTIT and SDTIT (Title Layers) layers are set to non-plot so the sewer and storm drain titles do not plot and the linework for those two utilities get changed to a thinner line and different linetype.

[davidmatyas]

Robert:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP regarding named plot styles and the <Convertpstyles> command. Still alittle fuzzy on the logic but it kept me going on my project. <---hey that rhymes!!!!

Thank you again!
DMatyas