Color Standards

A quick question for anyone in the group:

The majority of my offices floor plans are generated from clients that send
their backgrounds to us & we use their dwgs. for our work. Would anyone know
of an autolisp routine that could do this:

We basically do all of our work using a .CTB file & about 6 colors. All I
want to do is have a routine that will look at their dwg., & if they drew
objects in one of our colors, the routine would automatically change those
colors to color green. I basically want to "Dumb Down" if you will, their
background automatically so I can begin my work in colors that our office
wants to stand out.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Mark

 

I agree, why not xref the "background" and assign green to all layers? If
their drawings are done properly (bylayer) this would eliminate going into
their drawing and modifying it.

 

I guess what it boils down to is that I'm getting too lazy!!!! I was looking
for something that I could go into one of their dwgs. & hit one tool that
would run a routine that would change all colors by layer & then change all
layers to color green in one click of a tool!!!! Basically what I do now is
I window the entire dwg., change all colors by layer & then go into layer
manager, right click to select all & then change all to color green. I guess
I'm trying to cut about 5 steps down to 1!!

Thanks

Mark

 

Don't know your field, but I think most people would recommend xref'ing the
background drawing instead of actually working in it. However, it shouldn't
be hard to make a button do what you describe. Try putting this on a toolbar
button:

^C^Cchprop;(ssget"x");;color;bylayer;;-layer;color;3;*;;

 

....bearing in mind that it won't affect specific colors that are embedded in
blocks, but then neither would your manual method.

 

From the Command: prompt:

CHPROP
ALL

C
BYLAYER
-LA
C
GREEN
*

To put this in a toolbar button:
^C^Cchprop;all;;c;bylayer;;-la;c;green;*;;
___

 

Great, I'll give this a try. I do XREF their background so I don't do any
work in their dwg. I'ts just that I'm trying to cut down as much steps as
possible when I'm using their dwgs. to set up mine. It gets very tedious
when I have 30 floors in an apartment bldg. that I have to get their
backgrounds changed as fast as possible before they send me another revised
set!!!
Thanks for the help, I'll give this a try Mon. I have absolutely no
experience in Autolisp that's a major part of my problem also.

Thanks again,

Mark

 

Tom, I respect you and your opinions and you know what "standards" are, but
you and I both know that 'bylayer' isn't in most cadders dictionary. <bg>

 

you and I both know that 'bylayer' isn't in most cadders dictionary. <bg>

On the contrary, most of the drawings I've seen are "mostly" bylayer, but
with just enough exceptions to be annoying! My pet peeve is yellow objects
on a yellow layer -- why would anybody do that?

 

If that is your concern, then you *should* be changing layer colors in your
working drawing, not the Arch's drawings. Imagine getting those updates 2-3
times a week and having to go into the all 30 of the drawings. <blech>

We have things setup so that we never need to go into the architect's
drawings. All layer control is done automatically in the working drawings.
You *do* have VisRetain turned on, right?

--
R. Robert Bell


Great, I'll give this a try. I do XREF their background so I don't do any
work in their dwg. I'ts just that I'm trying to cut down as much steps as
possible when I'm using their dwgs. to set up mine. It gets very tedious
when I have 30 floors in an apartment bldg. that I have to get their
backgrounds changed as fast as possible before they send me another revised
set!!!
Thanks for the help, I'll give this a try Mon. I have absolutely no
experience in Autolisp that's a major part of my problem also.

Thanks again,

Mark

 

Well said, Robert. I noted this twice but didn't care to argue about it. The
drawings should be xrefed and a system established where incoming
architect's revisions are NEVER opened and modified. That's time wasted,
IMHO. If this requires coordinating with the architect on color/layer
standards, so be it.

In my last job we had 5 different major clients who required that all their
jobs be done by THEIR different standard color/layer/plotting schemes. It
was a good discipline for our drafters because they had to learn to be
flexible and to turn loose of the idea of always working "my way." Just take
the drawing as it stands and go to work with it.

 

Off topic.
Soooo then - what do you do when the arch plans you receive contain
hard-coded xrefs and are whim-based aliased?
(Keeping in mind, later, that those paths and aliases are dynamically
attached to the architect/assistant's mood/skills, and will change
accordingly down the road)

Just curious.
<sigh>

 

Hard-coded paths don't matter as long as all the XRefs are located in the
same folder.

--
R. Robert Bell


Off topic.
Soooo then - what do you do when the arch plans you receive contain
hard-coded xrefs and are whim-based aliased?
(Keeping in mind, later, that those paths and aliases are dynamically
attached to the architect/assistant's mood/skills, and will change
accordingly down the road)

Just curious.
<sigh>

 

Just curious.

A hard coded xref just needs to be fixed, I don't know a workaround for
that. But that shouldn't be as time-consuming a task as re-coloring the
whole works to suit your own likes/practices. If it's an ongoing problem,
explain the problem and agree on how you're going to work together. Or,
alternatively, inform them of the additional fee you're going to charge for
doing the extra work.

In the case at hand, it sounds like the OP is voluntarily doing extraneous
work, just out of preference. If I were his client, I wouldn't be willing to
pay for this. If the extra work is directly attributable to the client's
drawing practices, though, I think it's reasonable to charge for it.

This is an ongoing issue for a lot of people, and I don't really think
there's a simple pat answer. Better communication, clearer contracts, and so
forth all come into play.

 

Well, let's just say I like to keep things separated... :-/
Sadly, although all the (outside) xrefs ARE together in one folder
this doesn't work too well when it comes to folder nesting depths >= 2.

Unless I'm missing something.

The worst part for me are the (outside) wackoid alias names.

 

Seems like most clients know just enough about xrefs to be dangerous.

 

use PROJECTNAME and have paths for the nested folders. Acad checks saved
xref path, current folder, then xref project search paths (projectname),
then support paths.

Not sure what you mean by alias - is that the xref insertion block name?
That should have no affect on finding xrefs, though it can confuse people
when the name doesn't match the saved path.

Dan

 

With regards to the Alias name thing, if the xref is aliased as, say,
ALTERNATE 1, perhaps because the drawing is called "ALTERNATE 1", the
immediate and grotesque (IMO) effect is that all the ALTERNATE 1|Layers are
escorted to the top of the Layer Drop Down List, thank you very much, and I
really have better things to find/look at than that...

(BTW, I like to have all the drawing layers AVAILABLE, xref or no, I usually
just want them to be listed somewhere else, such as the end, which is
usually accomplished by re-ALIASING the xref as XPLN-ALT1, or something
similar...)

Thus my feelings with respects to the 'wackoid alias names'.

Best regards,
David Kozina