Lineweights STB vs CTB

[sinc]

can you explain what the plot style property means? This is the first time i head-rd of a block having it's own plot style...?

EVERYTHING has its own Plot Style. Click on any object, and open the properties window.

If you use CTBs, it is always set to "By Color", and you can't change it.

[jrebennack]

I'm not here to pick a fight with this, but I did want to show the contrast between the "white/normal/lineweight" approach and STB's as regard to how a drawing looks on screen (which is, lets be honest, where you see your drawing 99% of the time).

I've attached 4 images, from a very, very simple Preliminary Plat drawing (just survey stuff, no engineering stuff) to show how color does make a big difference in readability on-screen if you are dealing with lots of layers. With the white images, try and find the proposed cabins, the existing and proposed gravel drive, the bluff lines, etc. Its a bit hard, isn't it. Now look at the STB one. Ah, sweet relief...

Also, this project hasn't even got to the point where there are pages of engineering work, such as proposed water and septic design, utility removal and relocation, grading, etc. Already its getting "white blobby". What happens when you get another 50 layers on top of this?

If "white/normal/lineweight" works for you, more power to you, I'm not telling you to change. However, for those of us in the civil/survey/architectural fields, to my eyes, it creates more confusion on-screen than the supposed confusion of STB files.

[pnorman]

If "white/normal/lineweight" works for you, more power to you, I'm not telling you to change. However, for those of us in the civil/survey/architectural fields, to my eyes, it creates more confusion on-screen than the supposed confusion of STB files.

Maybe I'm missing something here! I use CTB 100% so pardon my ignorance of STB. The fourth image you posted, with all the colour, would look exactly the same on my screen, wouldn't it? However it would still plot "black and white" with varying line thicknesses and shades of grey because the screen colors are all mapped to color black with varying lineweights and Screenings. If I want it to plot colour I just pick my color ctb.

Cheers
Phill

[ekubaskie]

If "white/normal/lineweight" works for you, more power to you, I'm not telling you to change. However, for those of us in the civil/survey/architectural fields, to my eyes, it creates more confusion on-screen than the supposed confusion of STB files.

You are doing one thing that STBs allow that CTBs don't - color-coding your linework by subject - which can really help if you tend to get lost in complicated drawings. It's actually separate from the lineweight question, though, as you can do the same with a single plot style that always prints black, and still apply lineweight by object/layer properties.

I didn't really have any negative feelings about your non-color images. I didn't have any harder time viewing them than I did your color examples. Neither set would appear on my screen, however - you have white/colored lines on a black background, while my setup has black/colored lines on a white background.

The ergonomics police tell us that the contrast between the positive world (especially sketches & markups) around you and a negative image on your screen requires your eyes to adjust far too often, contributing to fatigue and eyestrain. This is especially true with text (easily 50% of the ink on a typical subdivision plat), which is why we haven't seen word processing & spreadsheets in negative since Windoze came out.

In fact, I've found that lineweights are easier to distinguish when the background is white, and maybe that's part of why I like lineweights displayed and you don't.

BTW, nobody's trying to pick a fight, here. I've enjoyed our bit of back & forth on the subject. If you make it to AU I'll challenge you to a 12oz step-down curl competition at the AUGI bust. Loser buys the next round.

[jrebennack]

pnorman:
Assuming you have the colors set as the same widths in the example drawing, yes, sorta, but not really.

My point in posting the "white vs. STB" images were to show that as the number of layers increase, in a strictly all-white (or all black) layering scheme becomes harder to read (to me, at least).

On to your question. On the surface, there doesn't seem to be much difference between CTBs and STBs. But there are huge differences.

The first thing to remember is that there is no color = width relationship in plotting. So I can use the color green, for instance, for my proposed buildings and for my title block and not worry about one or the other appearing too thick or too thin. Except for tier lines (sorry if I speak survey/civil speak) all our lines and polylines have 0 width, so we aren't making up for the difference another way.

Instead, STB allow the use to make "styles". Think of styles like digital versions of a artists pen set, only you get to build the pens. So, in the STB I use at work, there is a style called "Solid10". Solid10 is setup as a solid black line, 0.01" in width. Its attached as a Plot Style in the drawing, where with a CTB the color resides (normally greyed out). Because me, the user, gets to build the "pens", I can make as few or as many style I want. I can make those styles plot b & w, color, greyscale; whatever I choose.

Where that makes a difference is in 2 areas. First, for visual readability on the screen, I can choose whatever color (index or true color or pantone) I want without worrying about what thickness it will come out the plotter. Recently, our company decided that light brown/dark brown was too hard to read for contours, so with the roll out of LDT 2007, the template has been changed to grey/red for the contour lines. I could just change the color in the template without worrying about how that would come out on the plotter, or having to redo a CTB to match, because the color has nothing to do with how it plots.

Second, there are far less styles in my STB than there are colors in the CTB. Our STB, which handles b & w and color printing is quite large by STB standards. It contains 46 styles, 12 black (with width), 12 grey (with width), 12 color (with width), and 10 percentages of greyscale. It could be smaller if I had several STBs, but as it is, it lets us plot pure b & w drawings, mixed (some things b & w, some things color), and pure color drawings. Also, because I decided the name of the styles, I can choose a name that everyone understands. I don't have to worry about fellow employees wondering if color 26 or color 27 plots as a 0.014" thick grey line. They can just choose "Grey14".

There are other advantages of STBs that I could drone on about for awhile, but at least this should give you a taste of some of the things you can do with STBs.

[sinc]

pnorman:

So, in the STB I use at work, there is a style called "Solid10". Solid10 is setup as a solid black line, 0.01" in width. Its attached as a Plot Style in the drawing, where with a CTB the color resides (normally greyed out). Because me, the user, gets to build the "pens", I can make as few or as many style I want. I can make those styles plot b & w, color, greyscale; whatever I choose.

We do something different. In general, we don't set lineweights in the STB. Those are set via the lineweight property (usually in the layer, since most objects have their linewight property set to "By Layer"). This seems to be a much better place, at least most of the time. Inside the STB, the plot styles are all set to "Use Object's Lineweight".

Then, in our STB, we define styles like "Black", "Dark Grey", "Light Grey", "Screen 40", "Monochrome", and of course "Normal", which would be better-named "Color". For most layers, our plot style is set to "Black".

Now say I want to do something like take Drawing X and add it to Drawing Y. However, Drawing Y contains my important stuff, and I mainly just want to superimpose Drawing X for a reference. I can XREF Drawing X into Drawing Y, then select all layers in the XREF and set their plot style to "Light Grey". When I plot the result, I see all of my "Drawing Y" linework in black, but all my "Drawing X" linework in Light Grey. The "Drawing X" linework still maintains all of the relative lineweights - thick lines are still thick, and thin lines are still thin. But all of the "Drawing X" linework prints in Light Grey, making it very distinct from the "Drawing Y" linework.

This is just one example of the sorts of tricks that are possible with this setup. A couple more examples: 1) We have a "Red" layer, which forces any object to print in RED (usually used for purposes similar to Markup Sets, to temporarily call attention to certain things). To get the plot back to normal, simply change the Plot Style back to "Black". 2) We are able to create point plots where all our linework is black, but the points are in color. This makes the points really jump out, and also lets us color-code different types of points on the same plot (all water points in blue, curb points in green, etc.). Net result is the plots are much easier for the field guys to read, cutting down possibilities for error.

The big thing becomes setting up your layers. Rather than ending up with a ton of Plot Styles, with the method I'm outlining you have only a few Plot Styles, and you use your layers for most of the control. For example, you can create a "CURB" layer, and place it in your drawing template. The "CURB" layer has the proper color, lineweight, and linetype. Since it is in your drawing template, it will be in any new drawing you create. If it should ever be missing, and you need to add it to a drawing, use Design Center to copy the layer from your template and add it to your current drawing. (You can also use Layer Translater, which is handy for converting old drawings or drawings-from-others to your new layer standards.)

There are some things I don't like about STBs. For example, Autodesk will not let you change the "Normal" plot style. I have found instances where it would be handy to be able to change the "Normal" style. Then most things could be left with plot style = "Normal", and if you want to change the plot, you could just change the STB file. This is still possible, you just can't use the "Normal" plot style. For example, you could create a plot style called "Default" in all of your STB's, and use "Default" as your primary Plot Style. Then you could simply switch STBs to get different looks, instead of opening the layer manager and changing Plot Styles for lots of layers.

I also would like to be able to apply a lineweight percentage in an STB. For example, I would like to be able to create a plot style that is similar to my "Black" plot style, but instead of "Use object's lineweight" for the linewieght, I would like to be able to select things like "Use 50% of object's lineweight". This would cause all lineweights to be cut in half. This is currently possible by manipulating paper space (e.g., scale your viewport up by a factor of 2, then use 1 ps unit = 2 drawing units instead of 1 ps unit = 1 drawing unit). But it would be much easier if this same sort of thing could be accomplished without reworking the paper space layout.

[jrebennack]

richards.64879:

As to your wanting the width to plot 1/2 in width, have you tried the "scale lightweights" check in the plot dialog box? Do use that when we plot our 34x22 on 11x17 size paper, seems to work well. (We have that damnable "save changes to layout" switch off in LDT2004, so no worries when we setup for a smaller printer, it reverts after the plot command is finished.)

If that doesn't work, what about something similar to what I did for my personal mechanical drawings? I took my STB at home (Mecha.stb) and made a copy of it, which I named "Mecha-Half.stb". In "Mecha-Half.stb" I cut the width down of the styles by half, but kept the names of the styles within the same. So when I plot a drawing 1/2 scale drawing, I choose "Mecha-Half.stb" instead of "Mecha.stb". Again, no "save changes to layout" so no worries about screwing up my layouts.

If your company is good about following CAD Standards, have you tried putting pre-built layer states in your template to automatically cut the lineweight in half? We do that here at work for our drawings. Again, this is sort of a special circumstance, because we know exactly what items the municipalities what to see in color for presentations, so we can just restore the "Presentation" state and the plot styles for the required layers switch to "Color--". You could have a layer state (that would, since its in the template, be in every drawing created via that template) called "Half" that would cut the lightweights on selected layers. It requires following the company CAD Standards to a tee since layer states won't affect layers that aren't defined within them.

[ekubaskie]

The "scale lineweights" option works with CTB based drawings, too. All the CTB fans can finally dump all their "half-size" .ctb files.