Plot Styles, Pen Settings, and Output Logic
Color in this drawing system is not aesthetic. It is a lineweight instruction.
Why this matters
Every line in your drawing will be plotted at a lineweight determined not by the Lineweight column in the Layer Manager, but by the color assigned to its layer as mapped through the CTB pen settings file. If the wrong color is assigned to a layer, that layer plots at the wrong lineweight. No amount of work on the drawing itself will fix a CTB mismatch — it is a settings problem, and it produces output that misrepresents the design. Setting lineweight by layer does not transfer well from office to office, impacting your firm's brand and style standards.
The Dave_Purdue.ctb lineweight standard
The lineweight hierarchy below is the standard for this course. Commit it to memory. When you create or modify a layer, the color you assign determines the plotted weight.
| Color # | Color | Weight (mm) | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Light Red | 0.00 | Dark hatches (near invisible weight) |
| 1 | Red | 0.01 | Proposed interval contours |
| 11 | Dark Red | 0.05 | |
| 50 | Light Yellow | 0.10 | |
| 2 | Yellow | 0.15 | Text, back of curb, proposed index contours |
| 90 | Light Green | 0.20 | |
| 3 | Green | 0.22 | Fences, rails, seat/planter walls, unpaved walks, utility symbols |
| 91 | Dark Green | 0.25 | |
| 4 | Cyan | 0.30 | Face of curb, site furniture, light fixtures, paved walks, title block symbols & text |
| 5 | Blue | 0.40 | Buildings, walls, title block lines |
| 7 | White (Black) | 0.70 | Contract limit line — heaviest line on any drawing |
| 8 | 80% Gray | 0.25 | Dark gray hatches |
| 250–254 | Gray tones | 0.13 | Existing contours, light gray hatches, existing utilities |
| 12 | Light Red | 0.25 | Property lines |
| 64 | Olive Green | 0.18 | Evergreen trees & shrubs |
| 72 | Sage Green | 0.22 | Ornamental trees & shrubs |
| 92 | Light Green | 0.22 | Trees & shrubs — light green |
| 94 | Medium Green | 0.22 | Trees & shrubs — mid-green |
| 96 | Dark Green | 0.22 | Trees & shrubs — dark green |
Plotting to PDF
All output from this course goes to PDF using the DWG to PDF plotter with Dave_Purdue.ctb pen settings selected. The PDF is resolution-independent, universally readable, and the professional standard for client deliverables.
In the PLOT dialog: set Plot Area to Layout, Plot Scale to 1:1, and verify the pen settings file is correct before clicking OK. Do a Full Preview before every plot. What you see in paper space is not always what you get — lineweights, layer visibility, and IMAGEFRAME visibility can all produce surprises.
IMAGEFRAME
Any raster image (aerial, sketch, photo) has a visible frame border in AutoCAD. Set IMAGEFRAME to 0 before plotting to suppress this border in the output. Forgetting this produces a box around every raster image in the final PDF — a visible, avoidable error.
Try this
Plot your drawing to PDF. Open the PDF and answer these questions: Are your lineweights visibly different from each other? Is your heaviest element (Color 7 / White) clearly the heaviest line? Is your property line (Color 12) distinctly heavier than your contours (Color 1)? If you can't see a clear lineweight hierarchy in the output, your color assignments are wrong and your drawing is not communicating correctly.
What breaks
Wrong pen settings file selected — if Dave_Purdue.ctb isn't selected, all lines plot at AutoCAD's default weights. Every layer looks the same weight in output. Check the pen settings file every time you plot on a new machine.
Plotting from model space — plotting from model space plots whatever is visible in the current model view, not your carefully arranged paper space layout. Always plot from the layout tab, never from model space.
Plot Scale not set to 1:1 in the plot dialog when plotting a layout — the layout already contains scaled viewports. Setting a plot scale other than 1:1 re-scales the entire sheet.