Plotting question

How can i set up a plot with say a building plan in black and white but with only a hatch area that is coloured. How do i set my plot style up to do this.

Have set up at the moment a plot style in all coloured and one in black and white

whats best waty so i can say plot in black and white but just use certain layers in colour. At the moment i have just two seet ups. Can anyone advice best method

thanks

How can i set up a plot with say a building plan in black and white but with only a hatch area that is coloured. How do i set my plot style up to do this.

Have set up at the moment a plot style in all coloured and one in black and white

whats best waty so i can say plot in black and white but just use certain layers in colour. At the moment i have just two seet ups. Can anyone advice best method

thanks

If 08 supports 'set colour by viewport' use that. Set all layers in the viewport to be printed to black except the one for colour. The basic layer info is unchanged. Just done this for first time for Planning Application 'Site Location Plan' to show only a red application boundary. This is in Arch 2009 though...

If 08 supports 'set colour by viewport' use that. Set all layers in the viewport to be printed to black except the one for colour. The basic layer info is unchanged. Just done this for first time for Planning Application 'Site Location Plan' to show only a red application boundary.

Thanks for the info. I was curious about how isolate colors myself. Fifthtexas, please put up a picture if your design seems to come out okay. I'm curious to see what the finished product looks like.

We use a simple CTB the first 8 colours are black the next up to colour 250 are true colour so 40 = light blue 20 =red we plot colour by layer as a rule sometimes change colour by entitie but same layer. Its simple and every one knows what is going to come out.

One of the guys here played with colour by viewport and it made hard work of a simple colour change to objects as we were not aware at the time this could be done, within the drawing you had to keep checking which of the two methods was used. He was told don't do it again as others have to work on the same drawing at times and the task did not warrant using this method only 4 layers involved.

We have around 6 different setups thick & thin as well as colour

Yep, you should be able to use either CTB as BIGAL's suggests with a range of colours being black, the rest showing the normal ACI colour. E.g. Red=1 is actually the same colour as Red=10, but I set my Red=1 as black with a 0.18mm pen thickness, while the Red=10 is set to "Object Color" and 0.25mm pen.

An alternative way could be to use STB instead. That way you can set which pen to use irrespective of what colour it is. Then the pen can be set to use Object color, instead of some specified colour such as black. There's no "true" benefit between either. They both still have the same problems, and both still work the same way - it's just that with STB you could have lines drawn in many colours, but plotted in any one single colour. For this scenario, it doesn't necessarily make for any benefit.

In either case, you have 2 options to have only a portion of a drawing plotting in colour, while the rest is in black (unless you draw it that way). The following methods will allow you to have this work by simply adjusting the viewports / the layout drawings. You need not alter the original linework, and thus you can have multiple scenarios working with the same linework. Both work on the same principle (i.e. create 2 copies cut around the coloured area) - please note, all your linework's colour / plot style (CTB / STB) HAS to be set to BYLAYER, otherwise none of this will work:

1. XRef method. This should work in even older acads, but is a bit more complex. Have your linework in a separate source file, then XRef that in. Rename the xref in the XRef manager, then XRef it in again. You will now have 2 versions of the same XRef - which will allow you to modify their layer colours / plot styles independently. Next use XClip to show only the coloured area on one of these, and do the negative (note you may need 2 halves to create holes cut out) for the black.
   
2. Only works with 2008+ versions of ACad. Create 2 (or more) viewports. Use VPClip to shape them to your needs - make sure they still align. You may also need to do one (or more) in 2 halves to form holes. Go inside one of them, open the Layer manager, change the layer's VP Override colours / plot styles. The column would be to the right of the normal Color / Plot Style, and their headings would be VP Color / VP Plot Style. Close the layer manager, set the next VP current (by clicking in it), again open the layer manager. Note you can use Merge to set the properties of several VP's to match one - so you don't need to do the layer manager thing for each if their settings are going to be the same.
   

The 2nd doesn't need any xreffing, but can only work with a version allowing viewport overrides (i.e. 2008+ ). You can more easily modify the are by using a stretch on the VP objects. The 1st I'd use if anyone's got an older ACad, but it could cause strange things happening as you're renaming an XRef - effectively making it difficult to manage. Unfortunately you have to re-XClip each if you want to have a different area coloured - this is not as efficient as doing a stretch on VP's.