Author Topic: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)  (Read 2270 times)

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MSTG007

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Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« on: April 04, 2017, 10:55:58 AM »
I have our company's CTB that is setup for our "grey scaled" plotter. We usually print to PDFs then send the PDFs to our plotter.

We do a lot of Civil Site. For instance currently our "Utility lines (Water, Sanitary, Telephone) plot off a form of grey with the assigned width from the CTB.

I want to know if I can adjust the CTB file to print in Color those Utility Lines with the same "line width", but also (plot black to our plotters.

If I open our Utility Plan in a PDF we see it look as it should (no colors, just black and greys). We send that to our plotters and it looks like the PDF. IF I can open up the "new" Utility Plan" (with colors). I can easily make out the utility lines. But if I send that same PDF to our plotters, it comes out really light.

This was just asking if this was possible or not.

Thanks guys.
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ChrisCarlson

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2017, 12:43:03 PM »
The CTB does not know where the plot will end up. The easiest option is to copy/paste your current CTB, rename the file to SomethingSomething-Color.ctb and change your 50 shades of grey into colors.

sljohnson

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2017, 01:56:03 PM »
We colorized our CTB this past year and we had a similar graying issue when piloting from AutoCAD or PDF with the new CTB. It relates to how each program handles colors, short of Adobe and Autodesk locking some programmer is a room together to figure it out, it's probably not changing. Our work around was to assign a darker shade to the plot color for a given screen color we liked, i.e. Screen color 130, plot color 138. It let us produce color PDFs that were still readable when printed on a B&W laser printer. Yes, the color is darker on the PDF or color print than the screen, however if you're using a black background in your work space having a brighter screen color pops a bit more. YMMV depending on what you're attempting to visually accomplish.

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DanB

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2017, 01:57:48 PM »
We utilize one CTB file. All the colors are assigned to be black/grey scale. When we want to plot in color, simply change the layer to be a true color (can adjust lineweights as needed).

MSTG007

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2017, 02:01:49 PM »
I was messing around with that today. I have a drawing with all 255 colors in squares. I went through and assigned them there truecolor. Worked great to a degree, but when I wanted to change the lineweights, I could not match some of the defaults that are in our CTB file. From the drawing I could only go out to the hundredths opposed to the thousandths that is in the ctb.
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dgorsman

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2017, 02:32:20 PM »
When you say the original CTB is set up to plot "... forms of grey...", do you mean you have the ACI color values screened at other-than-100%?  Or are you "faking it" through letting the plot system approximate the color in a grey-scale?
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MSTG007

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2017, 02:40:26 PM »
Hopefully these pics will make more sense.

With the second photo. I was able to copy the CTB file.
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MSTG007

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2017, 07:03:19 AM »
Another dumb question. Within the CTB file, I am trying to change the colors from Color 12 to its TrueColor of 165,0,0. But the CTB will only allow 163,0,0. This does happen on other colors. Don't know why.
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ChrisCarlson

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2017, 08:13:22 AM »
Default TrueColor settings use HSL coloring. Under the TrueColor tab, change HSL to RGB.

ronjonp

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #9 on: April 05, 2017, 09:23:25 AM »
Why are you converting index colors to RGB in the plot style? Forgive me if I'm way off, but couldn't you just use 'Use object color' and get the same result?

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MSTG007

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Re: Understanding CTB file (Black vs TrueColor)
« Reply #10 on: April 05, 2017, 09:54:49 AM »
sometimes you feel like a nut... sometimes you feel like ____________________. Thanks for the input guys.
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