When plotting an Advance Steel drawing, it is important to know that you can set up how each line is printed independently, through the mapping rules contained in the .ctb file.
Advance Steel controls which colors are used to display the elements in a drawing, but not the line weight. This is where the .ctb (AutoCAD Color-dependent Plot Style Table) file comes in, since it enables the user to assign a line weight property to each color present in the drawing.
Advance Steel comes with a default .ctb file called AdvanceSteel.ctb, located in the following path: C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Advance Steel 201x\[INSTALLATION LANGUAGE EXTENSION]\Shared\Support
To edit the default .ctb file:
- Open the Page Setup Manager dialog (right-click on the Advance Steel layout and choose the Page Setup Manager option)
- Use Modify button to access the Page Setup dialog
Figure 1 – How to access Page Setup Manager
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Note: The Page Setup dialog provides the option to control the way the current drawing is plotted, the setting being saved per DWG file.
This can also be done directly in the prototype (using the same steps to access the Page Setup dialog), allowing Advance Steel to produce all the drawings using the same settings.
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- Select AdvanceSteel.ctb from the combo-box on the top-right side and access the Edit page by clicking the button next to the combo-box:
Figure 2 – How to access the Plot Style Table editor for the default AdvanceSteel.ctb
- The Plot Style Table Editor dialog offers the option to map the color of various lines on the drawing with the lineweight
- The path where the AdvanceSteel.ctb file is located is displayed in the General tab:
Figure 3 – Plot Style Table Editor - AdvanceSteel.ctb (General tab)
- On the left side of the Form View tab dialog, under Plot styles, all the colors that can be mapped are listed. New colors from the DWG can be detected as well, if used.
- On the right side all the properties of how the respective color line will be plotted are displayed:
Figure 4 – Plot Style Table Editor - AdvanceSteel.ctb (Form View tab)
- After making all the changes, use the Save as command to name and save your customized plot style.
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Note 2: Related information: FAQ: Which colors will be used to display the elements in a drawing?