Named Plot Styles

Back in the early days of Autocad, pen plotters were the norm and 16-color computer displays were the new hot thing.  At that time, considering the limitations of the hardware, it seemed logical to assign each screen color to a different pen on the plotter.  This let us draw "in color" in Autocad, and each color would plot to the paper using a pen with a specific pen tip size.  We could create a mapping between screen colors and pens, allowing us to use the screen color to specify the thickness of the line when it was plotted on paper.

And thus the CTB file was born.  This CTB file contained the mapping between screen colors and pens, and everything worked in such a way that it was easy to use with the limited hardware of the times.  But as technology continued to improve, our pen plotters have been replaced by large-format printers that can print lines of any thickness and in any color, our video technology has improved dramatically, and our old method of equating screen colors with pens has begun to show its limitations.

In order to get around the limitations of CTB files, Autodesk introduced a new feature, Named Plot Styles.  These Named Plot Styles replace the older, direct mapping of color to lineweight (now called Color-Based Plot Styles).  While there are a few tricks that were possible with color-based lineweight tables that we cannot currently do with Named Plot Styles, the Named Plot Styles are significantly simpler and more-powerful.  All things considered, Named Plot Styles are superior to Color-Based Plot Styles in most respects.  This article will cover the differences between Color-Based Plot Styles and Named Plot Styles, including the benefits and drawbacks to switching, and also illustrate some useful techniques for using Named Plot Styles.

The STB File

The old-style Color-Based Plot Styles used a CTB (Color TaBle) file to specify the mapping between color and lineweight.  Similarly, the Named Plot Styles use an STB (Style TaBle) file to specify the settings for each Named Plot Style.  The image below illustrates a sample STB file.

The most-obvious thing about this STB file is how simple it is compared to a CTB file.  Instead of defining a style for every one of the 255 possible colors, we simply need to define the plot styles that we wish to use.  In fact, some people may find that they can get by just fine with something as simple as a STB file that contains only the "Black" Plot Style, and no others.  Or you may create a number of Plot Styles, capable of applying a variety of effects.  And naturally, you may wish to vary some of the parameters from those seen in the image above.  For example, instead of defining the "Lt. Grey" Plot Style that uses color (194,194,194), as in the above image, you may wish to define your "Lt. Grey" Plot Style to print in Black with 50% Screen, or something like that.  But regardless of how you define your Plot Styles, you are unlikely to need more than about ten or fifteen Plot Styles total in your STB file, even if you do lots of fancy stuff.  And this single STB file, with its handful of Styles, should be sufficient for all of your drawings.  Never again will you need to worry about using the proper CTB file for the drawing.

Also notice how all the Plot Styles are set to "Use Object Lineweight".  This causes the lineweight to come from the object itself.  In most cases, though, we would probably not set the lineweight on the object itself, but instead, would set the lineweight for the object to "By Layer".  Then we would use the Lineweight setting in the Layer to control the lineweight.  (With some newer software, such as Civil 3D or Revit, we may also use the Style to control the Lineweight.  However, we have found that, in most cases, we prefer to create Styles that also have the lineweight set to "ByLayer", and use the layer to control the Lineweight.  In other words, the Style selects the Layer, and the lineweight is specified in the Layer.  This gives us the freedom to use tools such as the Layer Translator and Layer Standards, which can be handy in some situations, and can make it much easier to update things later, should we change our minds about certain lineweights.)

Since the lineweight is now set in the drawing itself, the STB file is typically used only to control the color and screening parameters.  For example, notice how the "Black" plot style is set to print in Black.  This means that, regardless of what color we use for the object on-screen in Autocad, it will print in Black to the printer.  Similarly, the "Red" plot style will cause any item to print in Red, regardless of its color on-screen.  (Also note that we have a "Color" Plot Style.  We are using this instead of the "Normal" Plot Style because it is impossible to edit the "Normal" Plot Style, and in the very last section of this article, we will see why we might want to have a "Color" Plot Style that we can edit.)

This may seem like a relatively unimportant change, but it can have dramatic repurcussions.

For example, when using CTB files, many people fall into the trap of using the same, small set of colors for everything.  By contrast, when using STB files, we can choose screen colors that make more sense, given the purpose of the elements.  Our water lines can be blue, while our sanitary lines are brown, for example.  Curb, sidewalk, edge of concrete paving, and edge of asphalt paving can all be different colors, instead of all being green or yellow.  Unimportant things can be given colors that fade into the background, while important things are given bright colors that jump out at the user.  All of these color choices can be made without regard to the lineweight, and the end result can be drawings that are easier on the eyes, with features that are easier to differentiate from each other.  The images below show one example of a drawing in a typical CTB format, versus one in a STB format.

Click on the above images to see larger versions; the linework is difficult to see clearly in the reduced images.  If you are used to seeing drawings like the one on the left, it may initially look better, since it is familiar.  But after working in a drawing for a while, the drawing on the right rapidly becomes more comfortable.  After a while, the drawing on the left starts to appear garish, and hard-on-the-eyes.  And if we were to switch to paperspace with a white background, we would not really be able to see any of the yellow type in the drawing on the left.  With the drawing on the right, we still have an issue if we switch to paperspace, because we chose dark colors for the less-important items and lighter colors for the more-important items.  Conversely, in paperspace with a white background, the dark items stand out more, and the light items are harder to see.  However, overall, we can see everything much more easily in paperspace when using the colors on the right.  And all the most-important text uses White in modelspace, which turns into Black in paperspace.  (Changing the background color to an off-white color, as is the default with Autodesk's 2009 line of products, helps things look good in both paperspace and modelspace.  But after trying it for a while, we decided we liked the black background better in modelspace, despite the contrast issues the black background creates.  You may want to experiment to determine your personal preferences.)

There is one other option, too, which can help deal with the "paperspace contrast" issues.  In our Page Setup, there is an option for "Display Plot Styles".  When this option is selected, our paperspace display will use the Plot Styles.  For example, items using our "Black" Plot Style will appear in Black in paperspace, instead of in the layer color.  This option can be handy at times, and it can also be annoying at times, so you may or may not want to use this option, depending on the purpose of your DWG and your personal preferences.

Problems with CTB Files

In general, CTB files have worked pretty well.  But there are a number of drawbacks.

First, a CTB file defines one plot style for each of the 255 different colors.  If we aren't using all 255 different colors, then the CTB file can contain lots of useless style definitions.  However, if we ARE using all 255 colors, we start to run into even more issues.

Some of these issues are caused by "convention".  For example, over the years, one common usage of CTB files ignores most of the colors, and really only uses the basic colors (color numbers 1 through 7: red, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, and white).  Most of the time, lineweights assigned to these colors in their color order, so color 1 (red) is the thinnest lineweight, while color 6 (magenta) is the thickest, while color 7 (white) is usually defined with a middle lineweight that looks good for text.  Many companies may also use colors 8 and/or 9 as shades of grey, maybe with two different lineweights, so that (for example) existing ground contours can be printed in grey.  This small set of colors forms the basis for many of the common layer schemes in many of the CADD standards (such as the NCS standard).  As a result, everything on the screen tends to be drawn in one of a relatively small set of colors.  Many things that are unrelated to each other end up being the same color on the video screen, causing unrelated items in drawings to visually jumble together.

To help with the "jumbling" issue, some companies expand on these basic colors.  In one common variation, colors 10 and higher are also used, but all colors use the same lineweight as their closest "base" color.  For example, all shades of red would have the same lineweight as color 1 (red), all shades of green would have the same lineweight as color 3 (green), etc.  In another common variation, specific colors are "reserved", and assigned special purposes.  However, in this scheme, the colors are still linked to the lineweights, and do not necessarily make sense in relation to the purpose of the object.  For example, a waterline might be red or yellow.  Obviously, we can work with this, but it is much easier to work in drawings where color is linked to the purpose of the linework, rather than the lineweight.

The biggest difference comes when we start trying to use some of the other properties of Plot Styles, such as printing in grey or greyscale, or using screening, and so forth.  With a "standard" CTB file that contains lineweight settings in the CTB file, in order to do these other things, we typically use "reserved colors".  These "reserved colors" are specifically setup to print with our desired properties, in this case, with Screening set to 70%.  For example, our CTB file could specify that color 14 (a dark red) will print in Black with a lineweight of 0.18mm (a typical lineweight for red), and with Screening set to 70%; color 54 (a dark yellow) would print in Black with a lineweight of 0.25mm (a typical lineweight for yellow), and with screening set to 70%; etc.  Then, in order to print at 70% screening, we could change all our red layers to color 14, all our yellow layers to color 54, etc.  But this is quite painful.  By contrast, with an STB that defines a "Screen70" Plot Style, we can cause ANYTHYING to print with 70% screening, and we can select an entire range of layers and change the Plot Style for all the layers to "Screen70", all at once.  This is far easier than changing the colors of every layer to the proper "Screen 70%" reserved color, the way we would need to do if we defined our lineweights inside a CTB file.

But probably the worst problem with CTBs is that, since it is common to create custom CTB files for "special purposes", it is easy to end up with a giant collection of CTB files over the years.  With turnover in personnel, it's easy to end up in the position where nobody has any idea why many of the CTB files were created, for what purpose, and for what drawings.  By contrast, when using STBs, we can generally use a single STB file for everything, which simplifies everyone's life, and completely eliminates one of our time-wasting administrative issues.

Problems with STB Files

STB Files are significantly better than CTB files, but there are still some issues.  They aren't quite developed to the point where we eventually would like to see them, and there are some problems we encounter while using them, especially after using CTB files for years.  But these problems tend to be rather minor, especially when compared to the huge benefits of STB files.  Let's take a look at some of these problems, so we know what to expect.

Drawbacks to Lineweights in Drawings

As stated previously, when using Named Plot Styles, things work best if we now control lineweights from within the DWG file.  For the most part, this works much better than our old color-based lineweights.  However, there is some potential that this may cause some issues for some people.

One potential problem occurs for companies that have multiple printers, with one (or more) printers that do not seem to print at the same "heaviness" as the others.  One printer may, overall, print "darker" or "lighter" than the others, and the prints do not look the same when printed to different printers.  Some companies may use the Plot Style Table to set different lineweights for the "oddball" printer, to compensate for the differences in printing.  In other words, we might typically use the "Company.CTB" file for our drawings, but when printing to this one printer, we might use the "Company-OddballPrinter.CTB" file instead.  If we set the lineweights for each color in the CTB file, then this gives us the ability to use different lineweights in the "Company-OddballPrinter.CTB" file, and compensate for the difference, at least somewhat.  When we begin setting Lineweights in the drawing itself, we lose this ability to use different lineweights for different printers.  But luckily, this seems to be becoming less and less of an issue.  These days, printers seem to print more consistently than they did in the old days, and a 0.100mm line looks much the same, regardless of the printer.  So hopefully, this is becoming a moot issue.

However, in a closely-related issue, some people have also created things such as a "half-weight" CTB file, where the lineweights for each color are defined at half the thickness of the "standard" CTB file.  When setting lineweights in the Drawing instead of the CTB or STB file, we can no longer do something like this.  It would be incredibly handy if Autodesk added an option for "Use Percentage of Object Lineweight" to our CTB and STB files.  Then we could create "half-weight" or "double-weight" Plot Styles, and configure them to plot at 50% or 200% of the "Object Lineweight".  Unfortunately, though, AutoCAD does not currently have this ability.  True, with proper use of Paperspace and the "Scale Lineweights" option in the Plot dialog, we can usually avoid the need for something like this.  But there are times when such a Plot Style would definitely be handy, especially since it would allow us to configure individual viewports to plot at "half-weight" or "double-weight".

But as handy as this ability would be, we can usually get by without it.  And by using the drawing Object or Layer or Style to specify the lineweight, we are now free to use the Plot Style to do many other things.

Drawbacks to Eliminating Color-Based Styles

While Named Plot Styles and STBs are superior to Color-Based Styles and CTBs in almost every way, they are not quite universally better.  But this is related more to other AutoCAD features that were designed with Color-Based Styles in mind.  Eventually, we hope that Autodesk will address these issues, so that all AutoCAD features work equally well with either CTB or STB files, but that time is not quite here.  The potential issues are probably illustrated best by Shape Fonts.

Since Shape Fonts are not capable of bold type, it is standard practice to use lineweights to control the "heaviness" of the text.  In order to simulate bold type, we simply use a heavier lineweight.  With CTB files, this typically means that we use different colors for our "normal" and "bold" types.

Where we start to run into issues with STB files is when we are using Shape Fonts and MTEXT.  In MTEXT, if we want a single word to be bold and we are using CTB files, we can simply select that word in the MTEXT editor and change its color.  However, we cannot select a word in the MTEXT editor and change the plot style for just that word.  We can only change the plot style for the entire block of MTEXT.

The easiest way around this problem with MTEXT is to use True Type Fonts instead of Shape Fonts.  This may mean revising your company standards.  But what we have discovered is that, after using True Type Fonts for a while, we have no desire to use Shape Fonts again.  True Type Fonts are generally capable of bold type.  This is dependent upon the exact font definition, and whether or not it has the bold format defined in the font definition, but most True Type Fonts are capable of bold type.  Historically, people have avoided True Type Fonts, because when they were first introduced, they caused dramatic slowdowns in Autocad.  We've been using True Type Fonts in Civil 3D for a while now, though, and we have encountered no serious issues.  We've encountered some, though, which I'll list briefly:

• True Type Fonts that are not at Z=0 sometimes look "bold" or "blobby".  This problem is more-noticeable with some fonts than with others, and it is also more-noticeable when printing reductions (such as when printing a 24x36 drawing to a piece of ledger paper, using the "Scale lineweights" option in the Plot Dialog).  This can typically be dealt with by putting all text at Z=0.  (When using Civil 3D, if you place True-Type Fonts in the blocks used for your Point Labels, you may need to configure the Point Style to "Flatten to elevation", so that the Point Marker is inserted at Z=0 instead of the actual point elevation.)  Unfortunately, because of this problem, if you need to create text at Z-values other than zero, you may need to use a Shape Font (i.e., a .SHX font) for that text.
• True Type Fonts seem to cause plots to PDF (using the default Autocad DWGtoPDF converter, or Adobe PDF) to become even more unrealiable than they already are.  We can usually get good results, however, by printing to DWF first, then printing to PDF from Design Review.  One time, however, when we were trying to send an electronic file out to a printer to print many copies of the plan set, we eventually had to print the plan set to DWF, and then print the DWF to TIFF to finally get something the printing company could use, but that was an extreme case.

Of course, the nice thing about True Type Fonts is that, once you start using them, you will probably never want to go back.  Lineweights do not affect True Type Fonts; the widths of the characters are built-in to the font itself.  This means we no longer need to be as concerned with using the proper lineweight for our text.  It also lets us use fonts where the "pen stroke" width varies in each character, making the printed image look crisper, richer, and more-professional.  Also, different fonts may be used to provide a clearer separation among features; for example, our outer boundary and lot boundary text can be made to stand out more, making the plat easier to read.  The images below show the same lot.  The one on the left illustrates a plat that uses the Simplex shape font for pretty much everything, varying only the text size and lineweight.  The one on the right illustrates the same plat with True Type Fonts, using different fonts to help differentiate the various labels.  Click on the images to see enlarged versions.

Not a drawback?

One common complaint many people have for why they do not want to switch to STB files is that "I can look at a CTB drawing, and my mind automatically maps the colors to lineweights, and I know exactly how it will print."

We find this to be a null argument, that doesn't really make sense in practice.  While the mind is definitely very malleable, and is very good at that sort of mapping, it really is a poor substitute for a true Plot Preview.  The Plot Preview does a far better job of showing what the printed drawing will look like than a "mental mapping" of colors to lineweights.  And a Plot Preview lets you see the result after ALL the Plot Style parameters are applied, not just the lineweight.  And now, with STB files, we can do far more with Plot Styles (as we shall see in a moment), and it is no longer enough to be able to "mentally map" colors to lineweights.  It is far easier to see erroneous settings by creating a Plot Preview than by trying to "mentally map colors".  Plus, it is very easy to create a Plot Preview (as little as one click, if you have the Plot Preview toolbar button on screen).  And if you wish, it is also possible to select the "Display Plot Styles" option in our Page Setup, which causes paperspace to display everything with Plot Styles applied, much like a screen preview.

But the big reason why this argument doesn't really make sense is that it presumes that lineweights are set by looking at a drawing, and using the lineweight that "feels right".  This is a bad practice, because each person may have a different idea of what "feels right".  And even worse, this practice tends to slow down drafting, as the CAD Tech starts with things at one lineweight, and later revises them to something else that "looks better", only to revise them yet again as more items get added to the drawing.  What we really want is a Company Standard, which dictates that "When we draw this, we use this layer, with this pre-set lineweight".  Then everything gets drawn with the correct lineweights, the first time, every time, and for most items, the Cad tech doesn't even need to think about lineweights at all.

Historically, these Company Standards were in a written document.  But it has become clear that these written documents do not work well.  They take too much time to compile, and technology tends to change so fast that they are out-of-date before they are even done.  Written Standards documents are always lagging behind, and are in constant need of revision.  Couple that with the fact that the Standards documents often go unused and ignored, and it becomes counter-productive for companies to invest in producing detailed CAD Standard documents that contain things like large tables of Layers and Lineweights.

Luckily, technology is now growing to take care of this need in better ways.  Since we are controlling most of our lineweights via Layers, we now only need to define a standard template, containing our standard layers.  Then, using tools such as Standards files and the Layer Translator, we can manage our Standards more-directly, using AutoCAD itself, rather than by producing giant "CAD Standards" manuals that take a lot of time and expense, only to get ignored.  And recent versions of AutoCAD are beginning to use Styles more and more heavily, which can do an even better job of encapsulating standards.  Of course, all these things must be configured in something like a drawing template, but once they are, our AutoCAD users should rarely need to worry about a lineweight setting.  It should all be automatic, controlled by the Company Standards, via AutoCAD Styles, Templates, and Drawing Standard files.  The important implication here is that, as we switch to Named Plot Styles, we may also need to take advantage of this time to move our companies to a more-rigorous usage of Cad.  If you have not yet been using tools such as the Layer Translator or Drawing Standards, now is the time to start, and forget about trying to maintain all this stuff in a Cad Standards Manual.  Instead, your Cad Standards Manual should be pared down to include only "big picture" items, and should not contain "details" such as lists of layers with their corresponding settings.

STB "Tricks"

OK, we're now specifying our lineweights in the drawing, and using an STB file with all Styles set to "Use Object Lineweight".  But how exactly does this gain us anything?  After all, we can setup CTB files to "Use Object Lineweight", too...

As stated earlier, CTB files have settings for every color, and every color has specific settings.  So, in order to do "fancy" things with CTBs, we still usually fall back on using "reserved colors" to do specific things.  Unfortunately, over time, we may end up discovering that an awful lot of our colors are now "reserved" for specific tasks, and can no longer be used freely.  To get around this, we might create additional CTB files, and have specific CTB files we use for each task.  But this "locks" each drawing to a CTB file, and without the proper CTB file, the drawing may print very wrong.  We can also end up with a lot of CTB files, each of which has 255 styles for 255 colors, which can further turn into an administrative headache we don't really want or need.  By contrast, if we can get by with a single STB file with only ten or so Plot Styles in it, we have completely eliminated one of our "time wasters".

Setting lineweights in the drawing has another benefit.  If we should receive a "drawing from others", but without their STB file, chances are good that we can simply set everything to use our "Black" plot style, and the drawing will print just fine.  And even if the "drawing from others" is using a variety of Plot Styles, if the Plot Styles have descriptive names, we can usually come up with a Plot Style that looks roughly correct, even if we do not have their STB file.  For example, if our "drawing from others" uses a "Gray" plot style, we can probably simply change that to the "Lt. Grey" Plot Style we have in our STB file, and we should get something pretty close to what we would get if we had the correct STB file from "the others".  By contrast, with CTB files, the plot may end up looking terrible unless we also have the CTB file it was designed to use.  If "the others" failed to send us their CTB file, it is much more problematic to try and recreate a substitute CTB file, because we don't have the descriptive Plot Style names that we (hopefully) would see if "the others" were using an STB file.  (And while it's true that we have seen STB files "from others" that use Plot Styles with names like "Style1" and "Style2", this has been very rare.  Luckily, most people who use STB files seem to use descriptive names like "Black" and "Grey" for their Plot Styles, rather than vague names like "Style1" and "Style2".)

These reasons alone should be enough reason to drop CTB files and switch to STB files.  But those reasons aren't enough, with STB files, we can now do many nifty "tricks" we couldn't do with our CTB files...

De-Emphasising Layers

When working on a project, it is often desirable to see one part of the design overlayed on another part.  However, if we simply XREF in another drawing and print the result, we can get something that's hard to decipher.  So one option might be to set everything in the XREF so that it prints in a light grey color.

Earlier, we talked about trying to do this when we define our lineweights in our CTB file.  But even if we use the "Use Object Lineweight" setting in our CTB file, it still does not work very nicely or easily.  For example, we could define a CTB file that sets color 9 to print in a Light Grey, and "Use Object Lineweight".  Then, if we want our XREF to print in light-grey, we can change the color of all our XREF layers to color 9.  Unfortunately, this turns everything in the XREF into the same color, which makes a mess of the on-screen display.  It becomes very hard to differentiate things on different layers in the XREF.

But with an STB file, we can simply change the plot style of the layers in our XREF, as seen below.

We can now print our image, and the extra reference data in our XREF will print in a nice light-grey color, while the stuff in our main drawing remains black.  Meanwhile, we have not affected the display colors on the screen, and our screen display is still easy to decipher.  And since we are defining our lineweights inside the drawing files, using Layers and/or Styles, we do not affect the lineweights in the XREF; even though the XREF is printing in light-grey, all the linework still "looks right" in relation to itself.  The resulting print can be seen below.

Emphasizing Layers

Closely-related to the last example, we may want to use Plot Styles to emphasize certain layers, and cause them to jump out of the plot.  For example, we might set certain layers to print in Color, while other layers print in Black.  This can greatly enhance the clarity of plots.

For example, take a loot at the image to the right.  This plot is actually using four different Plot Styles.  The primary, proposed linework is using the "Black" Plot Style.  The existing linework is using a "Lt. Grey" Plot Style.  (Note, for example, where the proposed waterline ties into the existing waterline.)  The layers containing the Cogo Points are set to our "Color" Plot Style, which causes items to print in color, using the layer color.  (The small red lines between the curb points and the curb are also on a layer set to the "Color" Plot Style.)  And the Engineer's proposed spot elevations are set to a "Lt. Blue" Plot Style, which is very similar to the "Lt. Grey" Plot Style, except that it prints in a faint blue color.

One of the nicest things about this is how easy it is.  If we want to change something from printing in Black, to printing in Color, to printing in Lt. Grey, to whatever, we can simply change the Layer's Plot Style (or the Style's Plot style, if we are using something like Civil 3D or Revit, or, in rare occasions, we can even change the Plot Style on the object itself).  And of course, if we are primarily using the Layers to control our Plot Styles, we can also use Layer Overrides; then layers can use one Plot Style in one viewport, and a different Plot Style in another viewport.  The possible variations, giving us an amazing amount of control.  And all of it is accomplished with a single STB file, containing only a handful of Plot Styles.

Applying Printer-Specific Settings

This final option starts getting a little bit more complicated, because it involves creating more than one STB file.  (This section also explains why we have been using a "Color" Plot Style, instead of the "Normal" Plot Style created by default in every STB file.)

Ideally, we would only ever use one STB file, and we would use that single STB file for all of our drawings.  But there are times when we may want to create a custom STB file, for use with specific printers.  In general, we try to avoid this option.  But there is one instance where we have found it useful.  If we print a drawing containing color on a printer that cannot print color, the color items will typically print in a grey-scale.  In the case of the exhibit to the right, this would cause the Cogo Points - the most important part of our image - to be hard to see, because they would print in some shade of grey.

Of course, we could change our Plot Styles before we print, but it is annoying to do something like that.  As an alternative, we can define a new STB file, which contains all the same Plot Styles as in our main STB.  The only difference with this new STB file is that plot styles like "Color" are now set to print in "Black", instead of the object color.  Similarly, the "Lt. Blue" plot style from before is now set to print in Black with a 50% Screen, resulting in a nice light-grey.

Now, all we have to do is switch to the other STB file when we print to a non-color printer, and our print preview now looks like the image shown to the right.  Notice that the Cogo Points are a nice solid black, which is not as nice as when they were in color, but is a lot more readable than if they had printed in greyscale.  The image below shows our two definitions for our "Color" Plot Style.  The STB file on the left is the one we would use for color-capable printers, and the STB file on the right is the one we would use for black-and-white printers.

When using this trick, we can also take advantage of our Page Setups, and the fact that Page Setups specify the STB file we wish to use.  If we create our default Page Setups so that our color-capable printers use our "Color" STB, and our black-only printers use our "Black&White" STB, then all we have to do is select our desired Page Setup in our drawing.  When we print to a Black&White printer, we'll get a plot like the one seen to the right, and when we plot to a Color printer, we'll get a print like the one seen in the last section.  We do not have to change anything in our drawing; all we have to do is use the appropriate Page Setup.

I Want my STB!

You should now be ready to explore the world of Named Plot Styles.  In our experience, it takes very little time to get used to using Named Plot Styles instead of the old color-based Plot Styles.  Depending on your particular needs, you may decide you have no reason to use Named Plot Styles, and may want to stay with Color-Based Plot Styles.  But more than likely, once you grow accustomed to using Named Plot Styles and STB files, and begin to appreciate the cleaner and clearer nature of Named Plot Styles, you will never want to go back!

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