Topic: Color lineweight settings for ctb

[Jeff H]

What lineweights do you guys/gals normally use for new vs existing objects?

[BlackBox]

Not likely that you are going to change your client's old habits but I thought the question was about setting up your "In House" standards.
Why not move to the modern method? 

... Fair enough. *tips hat*

What lineweights do you guys/gals normally use for new vs existing objects?

Our existing pen weights are typically 0.12 mm or smaller, and proposed range from 0.25 mm  -> 1.00 mm

[Jeff H]

Not likely that you are going to change your client's old habits but I thought the question was about setting up your "In House" standards.
Why not move to the modern method? 

... Fair enough. *tips hat*

What lineweights do you guys/gals normally use for new vs existing objects?

Our existing pen weights are typically 0.12 mm or smaller, and proposed range from 0.25 mm  -> 1.00 mm

Your pen is small compared to other weight settings

[CAB]

I don't make them narrower but add screening to the line weights. (40 to 60)

[Jeff H]

I don't make them narrower but add screening to the line weights. (40 to 60)

Here they use thinner lineweights to make them look lighter.
I need to try that out to see how it looks.

[BlackBox]

Not likely that you are going to change your client's old habits but I thought the question was about setting up your "In House" standards.
Why not move to the modern method? 

... Fair enough. *tips hat*

What lineweights do you guys/gals normally use for new vs existing objects?

Our existing pen weights are typically 0.12 mm or smaller, and proposed range from 0.25 mm  -> 1.00 mm

Your pen is small compared to other weight settings

Tell me about it.. 

Being serious though, we also use a pen weight of 0.00 mm (which can vary, depending on the minimum of a given printing device), with 0% screening... This produces the lightest black line possible, so-to-speak.

We had difficulty dealing with recipients not being able to print the same hardcopy plans we did, when using screen colors throughout our existing line work, hence the 0.00 mm mentioned above.

[StykFacE]

@Render, I know the client-specific Standards game all to well. 90% of my company does design that has to follow someone else Standards. Such a pain....

[BlackBox]

@Render, I know the client-specific Standards game all to well. 90% of my company does design that has to follow someone else Standards. Such a pain....

Certainly; I know this dynamic is not isolated to our group, and is something which many face.

Since transferring from a Transportation group into a Utility-based group, this seems to be significantly more demonstrative of our utility clients, much to our misfortune. Now, I am forced to implement new ways of expediting our process, given the need for Civil 3D Styles, and AMEP's, what is it, Display View Representations... I digress.

/offtopic

[Chris]

To answer the original question, we use several different colors, many with the same lineweight, mostly because we can then see it on the screen and know what we are looking at.
Red = .5
Yellow = .7
Green = .35
Blue, Cyan, White = .25
Magenta = .18
Several other colors, mostly using .25, and a couple that use 1.

I looked at switching to STB a while back.  I couldnt find a reason to make the switch.  I found more cons than pros.  Our dim text needing to be heavier than our dim lines was one of them.  If they are all on the same layer, and the lineweight is controlled by the layer, you cant do it.  I think there is a poll I posted on it somewhere around here.  Nobody was heavily in favor of one way or the other.

[CAB]

mostly because we can then see it on the screen and know what we are looking at.

This only works if you stay with your standards.

Our dim text needing to be heavier than our dim lines was one of them.  If they are all on the same layer, and the lineweight is controlled by the layer, you cant do it. 

You need to use a heaver font. 
 

[dgorsman]

Clients getting half the P&IDs in all Magenta, a third all in white, and the remainder in a mixed bag of colors just doesn't look good for whoever produced them.  It gets worse in 3D, where a pipe run passes through multiple models.  If it suddenly changes from sky-blue to dark green everybody from the checkers to the client is going to be wondering what the reason is, and "Because I like that color better" just isn't a good enough reason.

If we are therefore going to standardize colors then it's easy enough to use that for plot weights as well.  Less for users to remember, less to set up, and less conditioning work prior to sending back to client (who has everything in CTB to start with) which reduces possible errors ("Ooops, left that one drawing in Magenta, now clients complaining they can't print properly").

[StykFacE]

Well lets talk about object coloring for a sec.... sometimes I want an additional annotation layer to be yellow instead of green because of "notes". They are still on a plot layer, but in the model I want them to stand out. Now what if green is .25mm but yellow is 1.5mm - it's simply not going to work. So now, I have to open the CTB file, go to the Table tab and scroll down to see if I can see a "yellowish" color that's .25mm lineweight.

Or, I could simply apply that plot style right to whatever layer I want and call it a day.

On a side note, CTB's can technically work like STB's to a point. Just set all the colors to "Use Object Lineweight" in the CTB file and set the lineweights in the layer itself (obviously Templates come into play good in this scenario).

[dgorsman]

On a side note, CTB's can technically work like STB's to a point. Just set all the colors to "Use Object Lineweight" in the CTB file and set the lineweights in the layer itself (obviously Templates come into play good in this scenario).

We have a couple of clients which do this, and it works quite well provided the line weight is set properly (either on the layer or on the object).  We've had a few users try to add their own layers but use "Default" line weight and wonder "It looks the same on screen, why do they plot differently?".  I can see the same problem with STB's: it's one more setting to manage, either manually or automatically.  They have their advantages, but there are drawbacks as well.

[StykFacE]

I don't see STB's as much of a draw back to be honest when compared to CTB's. The only drawback would be if someone decided to get all crazy and name each style in pig latin or something. Keeping a good naming convention for each Lineweight is the best protocol. Or even if you use the "Extra Bold, Bold, Medium, Thin, Extra Thin" naming convention then that works too.

Take layer control for example. When you have an existing drawing that you've been cruising along in for awhile and want to add a new layer, you automatically choose a color. Most often this is because you correlate the color with the lineweight thickness you want that layer to be. Well with STB's you have an extra step of selecting whatever named style you want. If you don't, it uses the Default (you can't delete the Default) and it inherits the global lineweight that was decided when the STB file was created. So in a sense there's no drawback, only a different routine.

*EDIT* Just to add: The big drawback for CTB's in my opinion is (1) having to "hunt" for the lineweight selected for whatever color you're after and (2) no ability to override single objects unless "By Object" is chosen on the CTB. Certainly the limitations of CTB far exceed the limitations of STB.

[Jeff H]

I don't see STB's as much of a draw back to be honest when compared to CTB's. The only drawback would be if someone decided to get all crazy and name each style in pig latin or something. Keeping a good naming convention for each Lineweight is the best protocol. Or even if you use the "Extra Bold, Bold, Medium, Thin, Extra Thin" naming convention then that works too.

Thats how we name ours
 
Extraway Oldbay
Oldbay
Ediummay
Inthay
Extraway Inthay