Why do we use the .CTB method for controlling lineweight in our drawing output. I'll try and explain. The drawings I use along the way in this video can be downloaded here: drive.google.com/file/d/1_aEg...
Thanks for the feedback Steve, much appreciated. .CTB has been around ages but I have not found a better system yet in other software. I use a 'pencil case' analogy when trying to get my students to understand it - thin, medium and thick black pens and then lots of coloured felt tip pens. The fact that it is a separate file means it can be sent or archived with a job, personalized or standardized. Somebody at AutoDesk earned their crust the day they invented it. Best regards from (surprisingly) sunny Scotland.
If you are drawing things like buildings for architectural plans, you want lines that are designated for specific items. You name a layer according to what you draw with it. For instance, you'd have a layer for walls that you call WALL, or A_Wall. When you click on a line, the layer name tells you what the line is a part of. If the name is A_Wall, I know that it is part of a wall. A_Door layer is for, doors. Surprise. The A_Wall layer has a thicker line weight than the A_Door layer, and the A_Wall-Sill layer is a little thinner than the A_Door layer. Each layer is given a different color so you can identify them on sight. AutoCAD allows you to set the color, line weight, and line type, for each layer without modifying the CTB file, and that's what I do. Control layers in the Layers Properties dialog box. That keeps the settings in that ACAD file, and if you want to take a line that you have set up to another drawing file, you can copy paste it in. It will take its properties with it as long as there isn't another line with the same name already in the destination file. In two dimensional work, I have lines for drawing Elevations, Sections, and Details, that are not named for what they represent, but are named for the thickness they have. A2_00 is very thin, A2_70 is very thick. That is basically what he shows in the video. It is appropriate to not designate specific layers for particular objects because the same type of object that is represented as closer, should be drawn with a thicker line than the same type of object that is supposed to be further away.
Please, do the same video for STB! Or some video showing STB vc CTB advantages and disadvantages. I'm about to configure my company Template for Terrain Surveying in AutoCAD Civil 3D and I still can't figure out which one is going to be best. Topograph drawings uses a LOT of colours, so I think that CTB will make things bad as some texts and lines shares the same colour (for example white). As our drawer is really used to associate the line colours that he sees in Model Space with the surveyed elements on terrain, adopting CTB could kill our workflow, because I can control how elements are going to be printed but they are going to be showed differently on screen while working in Model Space. So please, if you could show the STB method I would be really appreciated for that...
