printing in color and b/w

[cbarron19]

the drawings that i usually print are black and white. i want a few of the layers to print in color and the rest to remain b/w. what is the best way to do this? thanks for your help.

[ReMark]

Are you using a CTB or a STB plot style file?

[Doove]

you can set colours in the layer manager, also lineweights, linetypes etc.

 

just so you know,

 

a dwg file needs a plot style file to plot / print. In the plot dialog box that comes up when you press plot, you may notice a small circle with a right pointing symbol in it on the very bottom right corner, if you click this it'll expand the dialog box showing more options.

 

At the top of these extra options is a dop box called "Plot Style Pen assignments" or something, this is where you select what plot style you want to use.

 

There will be standard ones in there and if you are part of a company, the other CAD monkeys may be using a special one set up for the company so ask them.

 

Essentially, you can start a new drawing using a standard autocad template but with either an STB or CTB plot style, you then create your own templates based on that, but you need to choose which way you want to go, the CTB or STB route. STB is more modern but the debate about this is as endless as the model/paper space dimensioning debate!

 

The CTB is the orginal more traditional way, though I work with both and have no real preference.

 

Just to give you an idea a CTB = "colour dependent plot style", so basically it maps display screen colours to plotter colours and line weights.

 

Where I work, for instance, we use green lines on screen which plot as black 0.35 lines, red lines plot as black 0.25 etc etc.

 

STB = "named plot styles", with these objects (lines, circles, blocks etc) can be assigned plot styles, or if their properties are set to bylayer will inherit the plot tyle assigned to that layer (using layer manager). This essentially gives you more flexibility in use of colour etc to aid display and visualisation, though it can be more complicated, and as I say, a lot of people are happy with CTB.

 

The help menu is good with this and I suggest you spend a little time reading the entries in there.

 

Someone did tell me that in days of yore plotters were only black & white and actually had 7 or 8 pens of varying line thickness rather than toner and a print head. The CTB file arose so you could use colours on screen to tell the plotter which pen (and therefore how thick) each line was to be.

 

Right, I'd better get on with some proper work!

 

Good luck.