Fifteen years ago I installed AutoCAD 2005 on my faithful workhorse XP desktop, and on my laptop, intended for occasional use out of town.?ÿ I set up the desktop with a plotter style table and have been plotting from it ever since. Not on the laptop because I never plot from there, but now I need to and I have long forgotten how to set one up. Can I transfer a style table (if that is what it is called) from the desktop to the laptop? I've attached a screen grab of the desktop.
Thank you so much for any help you can offer, because what I don't know about this would fill two volumes.
Yes. In the AutoCAD command line, type in STYLESMANAGER, hit enter, and a file explorer will pop up with the plot styles (.ctb) in it. Copy and paste the one(s) you want.
I just tried that and the style tables in both are identical, so apparently I've done something else to get the screen I wanted on the desktop. The basic problem is I can plot a color pdf on my desktop but only black and white on the laptop, so maybe I asked the wrong question. All advice is most welcome.
There are several ways to go about this.?ÿ
Short answer is that the plot style table is a file with a .ctb extension. The specific file is the one named in the upper right hand corner of the screen cap you posted. Find that on your desktop and put it in the appropriate place on your laptop. Then select it when you go to plot from your laptop (again, upper right hand corner of your plot dialogue.
"The appropriate place" is named in the search path under the "Files" tab of the OPTIONS dialogue. I've got mine pathed to a location on my C:drive. Out of the box it is pathed to location in the User profile.?ÿ ?ÿ?ÿ
Option 2 - That STYLESMANAGER command referenced by Richard opens the directory which the plot styles are pathed to. You can use that on your desktop to get the .ctb file you have been using, perhaps copy it to a thumb drive, then use it to identify the appropriate location on the laptop.?ÿ ?ÿ
A) Maybe you are not applying the ctb file to the plot? If you have no ctb file being applied you will get a color plot, with the screen colors.
B) monochrome.ctb comes with AutoCAD out of the box. But maybe you edited monochrome.ctb?ÿ on your desktop, and the monochrome.ctb file on your laptop is different. Or vice versa.?ÿ?ÿ
NOTE: monochrome.ctb, as it comes from Autodesk, should plot all your "pens" black, with lineweights and linetypes "by object". For some reason everybody is perfectly comfortable with the concept of linetypes by object - that's how everybody does it, but lineweights by object are somehow inconceivable. The idea that color = lineweight is deeply ingrained and it just does not have to be.?ÿ
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A) Maybe you are not applying the ctb file to the plot? If you have no ctb file being applied you will get a color plot, with the screen colors.
B) monochrome.ctb comes with AutoCAD out of the box. But maybe you edited monochrome.ctb?ÿ on your desktop, and the monochrome.ctb file on your laptop is different. Or vice versa.?ÿ?ÿ
NOTE: monochrome.ctb, as it comes from Autodesk, should plot all your "pens" black, with lineweights and linetypes "by object". For some reason everybody is perfectly comfortable with the concept of linetypes by object - that's how everybody does it, but lineweights by object are somehow inconceivable. The idea that color = lineweight is deeply ingrained and it just does not have to be.?ÿ
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This is what I love about plotting by style within Civil3d 2015+....color doesn't matter and line weight can be applied when plotting. It's WAY easier to manage and support, generally speaking.
Thank you everyone for trying to help me. The original problem is that pdf995 (which I love) on my desktop crashed for no particular reason. The latest pdf995 would not load to my old desktop, which is why I resorted to my old laptop. I just found out that pdf995 offers archived versions, and the old version loaded to my desktop almost instantly so I'm back in business. Yay for work arounds. This is such a relief to me. Calls for a nice glass of wine with French bread and a salad for lunch and fortunately I have all the fixings.
And clearly praise for pdf995 for thinking of archived versions.
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