Mirkin Posted May 6, 2015 Share Posted May 6, 2015 Hi all We have a really weird system at our company where all lines in green on the drawings print out in red and everything else prints black (Don't ask me why!) Anyway, a lot of the older drawings have lots of green stuff in them, and obviously when I want to plot them I have to change all the green to some other colour. This is particularly laborious when the green is text inside blocks. Is there any way I can run a routine on the drawing, either before or after it has loaded, to make all the green into another colour? It sounds tricky to me but it might be possible. Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BIGAL Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 Just have a look when plotting at your CTB file if you just do plot and accept "your" default ctb that is the problem, easy fix just click on edit, top right, and reset the colours say back to defualt then save it as a different name. We have 1-9 as blacks the 10-250 as the actual colour the 251-254 as greys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirkin Posted May 7, 2015 Author Share Posted May 7, 2015 BIGAL what you say makes perfect sense. Sadly the bloke I work with wouldn't be able to cope with the confusion. We would have to have a ctb file for the new drawings and a different one for the old ones. I have no idea why it's set up how it is or why he changed his mind at some point to make green print red but it's not making my life very easy at all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobDraw Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 We would have to have a ctb file for the new drawings and a different one for the old ones That is the way it should be done. When changes are made to the .ctb, either the old .ctb needs to stay in place for legacy drawings or the drawings need to be changed. It was poor planning on the part of the person making the change. As to making the changes, There are a couple of things that might help you. Change the layers that are green to another color. This will be all you need to do, if there aren't any overrides. The SETBYLAYER command will help for overrides. Any global changes will have to be analyzed to make sure anything undesirable doesn't happen. If we could see a sample drawing, we could be of more assistance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirkin Posted May 7, 2015 Author Share Posted May 7, 2015 Hi Rob Can you take a look at this drawing please and let me know what you think. I just want a quick easy way to turn all the green to black/white. I don't think it will be possible. And yes it was very bad planning!!! Chris 15610-01.dwg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobDraw Posted May 7, 2015 Share Posted May 7, 2015 TBH, I have much disdain for drawings like that. Everything is on layer "0". I'm sorry I cannot be of much help without suggesting that you adopt totally new standards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dana W Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 Eeewww, they all have individual object properties, even some of the whites, and some are block attributes. It will take nearly a half hour or more to manually ferret out the changes for just one of these drawings. Sounds like a lisp is needed. If every thing was by layer, on a different layer, it would take mere seconds to do it manually, once the drawing was opened. I'm thinking whoever wants the color changes needs to re-think this one. Most probably, that person is the one who originally drew this mess, but now sitting in the "good chair". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gazza_au Posted May 8, 2015 Share Posted May 8, 2015 Cant you just select monochrome.ctb and print everything in black and white? Color and linetype overrides are not good practice, that's what the layer property manger is for. Gazza Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirkin Posted May 8, 2015 Author Share Posted May 8, 2015 Haha you guys can see the predicament I'm in. My boss is pretty old school and computers aren't really his thing. I've only been at my company 3 months and everything he does is as random as this. I've taken the "easy" option and created a new ctb file that will print the old drawings out in monochrome except for a new shade of green that will come out as red. It's easier to change a few lines than all those blocks. What a nightmare! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 9, 2015 Share Posted May 9, 2015 There is a routine, type on search XCOLOR or COLORX I don't remember. This routine has effects even with nested blocks. Maybe it don't work with Mline... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 9, 2015 Share Posted May 9, 2015 (edited) Hi RobCan you take a look at this drawing please and let me know what you think. I just want a quick easy way to turn all the green to black/white. I don't think it will be possible. And yes it was very bad planning!!! Chris Ok i understand the issue... This is my collection of routines for these cases. I hope it will be useful ATB_all to by layer.LSP COLORX.lsp FIXBLOCK.LSP fixblocks.lsp gcc.lsp norm_to fix block.lsp ssfilter-by-color.LSP Edited May 11, 2015 by marmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 9, 2015 Share Posted May 9, 2015 (edited) Ive seen your drawing, maybe try first gcc.lsp for lines and fixblocks.lsp for blocks. But pay attention cause fixblocks will change even the layer (it puts all nested objects on layer0 and colored by block). If fixblock is not good for you because you don't want to change even the layer, try to: 1) select all blocks you want change using quick selcet or a routine. 2) copy and paste them in a new file (maybe paste at the same coordinates). 3) use colorx in the new file with your blocks (it will change only colours) 4) purge those blocks in the main file (you have to eliminate them from the database, its impiortant!) 5) paste the modified blocks from new file to the main file at the same coordinates. Edited May 11, 2015 by marmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ttray33y Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Hi allWe have a really weird system at our company where all lines in green on the drawings print out in red and everything else prints black (Don't ask me why!) Anyway, a lot of the older drawings have lots of green stuff in them, and obviously when I want to plot them I have to change all the green to some other colour. This is particularly laborious when the green is text inside blocks. Is there any way I can run a routine on the drawing, either before or after it has loaded, to make all the green into another colour? It sounds tricky to me but it might be possible. Cheers all you need is to modify the ctb file, but if you incest you may use this lisp. type: chac to change to color and type uu to undo all changes change color.lsp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirkin Posted May 13, 2015 Author Share Posted May 13, 2015 Thanks for the Lisps guys. I tried to run them but to be honest I'm a bit of a novice at this side of things. I used the Appload command to try change colour and also fixblocks. AutoCAD said that they had loaded successfully but I have no idea how to make them work from there. Can you give me some more detailed instructions please? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobDraw Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 (edited) Wait. Do you have any idea what they do or how they do it? For instance, I see three for fixing blocks. What do they actually do? Lacking that type of information and running the code could be disastrous to your drawing. Make sure to try them out on a copy of the file. I'm sure marmo was well meaning but just throwing a bunch of unknown stuff at a drawing is probably not a good idea. See this thread, http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?1390-How-to-use-the-LISP-routines-in-this-archive, for how to run LISP. Edited May 13, 2015 by RobDraw Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 Thanks for the Lisps guys.I tried to run them but to be honest I'm a bit of a novice at this side of things. I used the Appload command to try change colour and also fixblocks. AutoCAD said that they had loaded successfully but I have no idea how to make them work from there. Can you give me some more detailed instructions please? Whereas he requested eventually a lisp routine in his first post, we could suppose he is able to manage them. However you're right when you say it could be disastrous using them without awareness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobDraw Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 In my experience, that is not a fair assumption. I've seen countless people requesting code that don't know the first thing about it. For some reason, they think that because they don't know how to do something, they need some magical code to do the work for them. After seeing the example file, I wouldn't make any assumptions about depth of knowledge of AutoCAD. The shotgun approach that you are suggesting is not valuable to the OP and could perpetuate the bad CAD that is already happening here. If you could explain exactly what each code does and how it does it, that would allow the OP to evaluate if it suits his needs and possibly teach him something at the same time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mirkin Posted May 13, 2015 Author Share Posted May 13, 2015 Guys Please don't argue about this issue. I already tried doing the things mentioned in this post http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?1390-How-to-use-the-LISP-routines-in-this-archive but basically nothing happened. Again can I ask exactly what to do. I'm not daft enough to do things to originals of the drawings by the way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobDraw Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 I'm not arguing. It's just friendly advice for both of you and you are not heeding my advice. You really shouldn't blindly run LISPs, unless you know exactly what they do or you trust the source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmo Posted May 13, 2015 Share Posted May 13, 2015 (edited) For example load colorx in a sample dwg and type colorx on prompt (it will change all colors in this dwg, all entities with the same color, even nested objects). Use it with the strategy I've posted in #12: 1 select the entities you want change in the main file with Quick select, 2 cut them from the original dwg and paste them in a new dwg, 3 then change their color with colorx (maybe use bylayer color). 4 paste them in the main file For blocks pay attention, because you've to purge them before pasting. If you want how it works exactly this code, type colorx on search of this forum, it was edited by a member. Edited May 13, 2015 by marmo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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