

Your template, and all drawings based on it, will now be CTB-based. To do so, open your STB template and complete the conversion steps outlined above. Because you are converting your office to use CTB styles, your ultimate step is to convert your STB template to a CTB template. If you are currently working with STB styles, you likely have an STB template – a DWT file that you use as a drawing template to ensure that all your drawings have an STB plotting style. BatchMan is a batch file processing tool that applies processes, including STB to CTB conversion, to multiple CAD drawings. To convert your STB styles to CTB styles across multiple CAD drawings – or across all your company's existing drawings – complete the conversion steps outlined above using our BatchMan tool. The STB styles in the drawing you currently have open will be converted to CTB styles. Once you've assigned a color to each layer, type CONVERTPSTYLES in the Command line, and press Enter. Now go through and assign a color to each layer depending on the color standards you set. Click the top of the Plot Style column to sort the layers by plot style. Type Layer in the Command line to open the Layer Properties Manager. However, you'll use these same steps when converting all your existing drawings to CTB, as well as when converting your STB template to a CTB template.
Autocad plot style manager folder how to#
The following steps outline how to convert STB to CTB in a single drawing. You'll now just need to apply those colors to the appropriate layers.

You've already set your standard for plotting colors. If you were to view these styles and their corresponding layers in the CAD Layer Properties Manager, you would see the style names in the Plot Style column, as pictured below.Īt its core, the conversion of STB to CTB styles is a matter of assigning a color for each layer you will plot. In this example, the styles are named Extra Fine, Fine, Medium, Broad, and Extra Broad. Here is an example of a CAD Plot Style Table Editor containing an STB file with named plotting styles. Put a little thought into developing your standard, and you'll thank yourself later.Īs you develop your own plot standards, we highly recommend using an administrative document like our Pens file that you can easily print and distribute to each employee. Regardless of which colors you choose for which functions, we recommend selecting several colors for each lineweight or style (such as screening). Or if our line colors work for you, you can adopt them as your office standard. We encourage you to take some time to set a similar standard. For example, we've set multiple colors to represent lateral line and mainline pipe. We've also selected multiple screening percentages, as well as multiple colors to represent different objects represented by lines in the drawing. You'll notice in the Land FX Pens drawing that we've selected between 2 and 4 pen colors for each line thickness as it will plot. We recommend downloading and reviewing the following two documents to see how we set our standard for line colors: If your office is currently using lineweight-based plot styles, we recommend following our instructions to Convert Lineweight-Based Plot Styles to Color-Based (CTB) Plot Styles.ĭo This First: Set a Color Standard for Plottingīefore you convert your office to CTB files, you'll need to set your office standard for the colors that determine how your drawings will plot. Learn more about CTB files, and why we recommend them, on our About CTB Plot Styles page.

Because CTB is the most commonly used plotting method in landscape architecture, we've built much of our software's plotting capability around CTB files.

We recommend using CTB plot styles when configuring your plotter settings. Converting your STB files to color-dependent (CTB) files will provide you with the best possible results when plotting your drawings. Many offices have set up their plotting preferences using named (STB) plotting files.
