STB vs. CTB

One question about stb plotting:
If I use pack'n'go on a drawing set up for stb plotting, it includes
the stb file. I thought the reason for named plot styles was to
eliminate the need for the ctb file. What's the benefit if the
drawing won't plot correctly unless you have the stb file on your
system?

Chris

 

What I meant was, why is setting up a drawing to use an stb file any
better than setting it up to use a ctb file?
If someone sends me a drawing, they usually don't send me the ctb
file. If the drawing is set up to use an stb file, they just won't
send me the stb file.
I don't see how an stb setup is any better than a ctb setup. A new
user would have to be told how to set up an stb file, just the same as
they'd have to told how to set up a ctb file. With a ctb drawing, you
can tell how the drawing will look plotted by looking at the colours,
assuming the ctb file is a standard you're used to.
When I was converting our template drawings to stb to see how they'd
work, I was hoping that if I set a layer to plot at 0.35mm lineweight,
it would stick with the drawing, much the same at the plot scale does,
not be dependant on a separate file.

Chris

 

Hi Tom,

Do you agree that at the and of the day to go with the either of the plot
stile is a matter of choice? I have been looking at STB style for quite some
time and the only advantages I see in using it is if I want to present lines
thickness properly when attaching a drawing to a Word document. And even
then I am not sure if it is going to work since I never tried to do this
with STB styles. As we all know the drawing in Word document will be
shown/printed with lines of uniform thickness, unless all of the lines were
converted to polylines and assigned some width to them prior to inserting
into Word doc.
As for the ability to have lines of the same color but different line
weight when printed. Why would I want to have a drawing created with one
color only? I sure thing don't want this to happen. By the way, Microstation
has been using lineweigts from the day one and it was the only option at
least up till V95. Yet we always differentiate the drawing on the screen by
color.
To summaries the above I would like to say that amount of work involved to
set up and maintain either of the style is identical. In my opinion,
introduction of STB will not have as large the impact on drafting practice
as the introduction of paper space did.

Regards,

Igor.

 

How old is paperspace then? I always thought that paperspace wqas one of the things that separated AutoCAD from the other CAD software.

What's the key difference between STB and CTB?

DJE
Hi Tom,
Do you agree that at the and of the day to go with the either of the plot stile is a matter of choice? I have been looking at STB style for quite some time and the only advantages I see in using it is if I want to present lines thickness properly when attaching a drawing to a Word document. And even then I am not sure if it is going to work since I never tried to do this with STB styles. As we all know the drawing in Word document will be shown/printed with lines of uniform thickness, unless all of the lines were converted to polylines and assigned some width to them prior to inserting into Word doc.
As for the ability to have lines of the same color but different line weight when printed. Why would I want to have a drawing created with one color only? I sure thing don't want this to happen. By the way, Microstation has been using lineweigts from the day one and it was the only option at least up till V95. Yet we always differentiate the drawing on the screen by color.
To summaries the above I would like to say that amount of work involved to set up and maintain either of the style is identical. In my opinion, introduction of STB will not have as large the impact on drafting practice as the introduction of paper space did.

Regards,

Igor.



TomD wrote:

Chris wrote:

You're drastically over simplifying everything.

With styles (CTB or STB), lineweight can be determined either by the
style OR by the Acad property. The styles (again, CTB or STB) allow
much greater flexibility in how everything is output.

In my OPINION, using named styles is much simpler. My STB standard uses
very basic styles, BLK100 for 100% black, COL100 for 100% of object
color, BLK090 FOR 90% BLACK, ETC. Lineweight is determined by Acad
property (layer or object).

The ease of use has nothing to do with transfer of files. If you're
looking for an absolute *easy* way of making sure the recipient of your
file gets the same output as you do, with only one sent file, you'll
have to go to PDF or some such other format.

 

Hi Tom,

Glad to see we have agreed on most of the points <g>. By the way have
you ever tried to insert a Cad file with the line weights into Word
document? I am asking just out of curiosity and if you did, what was
the outcome in terms of printing the file from Word?

Thanks,

Igor.

 

Thanks Tom, but don't bother with the test. I will do it myself some day
and let you know the outcome. The reason why I have mentioned this in a
first place is that a few years ago I was asked to produce some Word
documents with drawings embedded into them. To get the print output
reasonably good I had to convert all of the entities in the drawings into
polylines and assign width to them. That's why I wander if with the line
weight preset it would make difference when inserting dwg. into doc.

Regards,

Igor.

P.S. No one has ever asked me to do this type of work ever since <g>.