Making the Floor Plan less noticable

Hi guys. Trying to find a bit of a short cut.

I am an electrician with a bit of Autocad knowledge. The boss wants me to do some As-Installed plans for him.

The Engineer has asked that the background be much lighter than the electrical circuits to make it easier to see what is important. I had a look at some old plans and saw that the entire background (Walls, etc) is done in fine dotted line which makes it very faint. This is perfect.

My question is, how do I change every line in the background to this?

I know I can change layers to the dotted line, but my problem is that many lines have their own properties for their linetype, instead of 'ByLayer'.

So I went into the blocks to change the lines manually. I can change the linetype, but then I need to change the 'Linetype Scale' to get the dots looking correct. I cannot select every line at the same time. I am assuming because their are Blocks within blocks.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Get one line the way you want and then use the match properties command and apply it to your other lines by crossing window

I was just thinking. Is there a way to do this with the actual plotting, without needing to change the plan? I plot directly to PDF in Monocrome. I do this because most plans I get are in colour and dont print very well. So if I changed the plot style for some layers I could probably do this an easier way.

Thanks for your reply. Only problem with matchprop is that it also changes the colours.

Plot style would be easier, As long as your Electrical work is on its own layer or colour. Then you could just screen (shade ) down the other linework.

I would use colours 254 255 continuous lines they are very light grey this way you dont play with plot shades and they will work wether you plot in colour or monochrome. Also make set the pen thicknes thin 0.18

Nice one BIGAL, the old KISS method.

I need to leave the original line weights, so interested in Plot styles. Any tips in this area?

Woohoo! I cannot believe it is so simple. Once I heard about plotting, I started to play. I found Screening. basically set the screening for every colour I didnt want to 50. 2 minutes later I was done.

Thank you all for your assistance. I will try to contribute to these forums as much as I can.

Glad you got it sorted..

I can barely see the yellow lines when they come out of a B&W pdf that I get when I use Office Depot Online for the print job.