Many firms historically use CTB (color based) plotting in LDT or ACAD.
The switch to STB is easy, but making the transition to using STB painless for users is critical.
The Framework products by default use STB plotting (named plotstyles) because it is much easier to maintain and produce consistent plotted output from Civil 3D that way.
- C3D Feature and Label Style complexity favor STB use.
- CTB plotting includes fewer properties hence you dumb down to employ CTB
In Release 7+ we supply both STB templates to CTB templates. Previous Releases are STB only.
- STB to CTB conversion is now easy.
If you are already using the NCS layer scheme and want to switch to STB, you can make the templates have familiar colors quickly.
- Save and Export a Layer States file that ONLY saves color and linetype values from an existing drawing.
- Import and restore the Layer State file into a copy of the template.
Staff now has familiar colors and linetypes and they can go right to work.
We do suggest you create Linetype only Layer States and avoid linetype layer assignment as much as possible except in publication drawings.
Remember color does not matter!
The most common comment we get from our customers about switching to STB...