If your office has no particular standard for color-to-lineweights, you might consider using the default Land F/X color-to-lineweights, as defined with Layer Color and Plotting in the Getting Started section.
If your office has a definite set of color-to-lineweight standards, you will want to change the Land F/X line colors so that there are no conflicts with the line colors presented in Land F/X.
The basic process will be to change the colors that have lineweights that conflict with your office standards, on of all of the drawings that are supplied within Land F/X:
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Use the Land F/X Line Color Worksheet to indicate which of the Land F/X colors that conflict with your current office standards, i.e., colors that you also use, but that you plot at a different lineweight.
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Use the Land F/X Batchman function, which can run batch operations on any number of AutoCAD drawings, to make the noted changes on the drawing LFX Pens.dwg located in the LandFX / Administration folder.
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Revise and change the LFX.ctb plot style table by combining your office standard plot styles into this table, and re-naming it to a new plot style table.
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Plot the changed LFX Pens drawing with the revised ctb file that you created in the previous step.
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If the plotted LFX Pens drawing correctly represents the different line weights, run the Batchman function on All Blocks of the Land F/X drawings. If there are obvious errors, review the plot style table for each color to see what the problem is, then re-plot the LFX Pens drawing until it plots correctly, and then run the Batchman function on All Blocks.
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Use the Land F/X Line Color Worksheet later in this document to indicate which of the Land F/X colors that conflict with your current office standards, i.e., colors that you also use, but that you plot at a different lineweight.
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Look at each Solid Line color number under the heading LFX Pen Color. View the width that Land F/X plots this color. If your office does not use this color, or if you use this color put you plot it at, or very near, the same width as Land F/X does, put a check mark at the column of No Conflict. If your office uses this same color and you plot it at a different lineweight, put a check mark at the column Conflict.
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Check for conflicts with the Irrigation Pipe lines, which are plotted solid, and the Non-plot Lines, which are screened for a “0” percent screening.
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You are not necessarily changing every color that Land F/X uses to your office standard, but are only changing the Land F/X colors which are also used by your office. Thus, using Land F/X may add some additional colors to the resulting ctb plot style, but you can continue to simply use the colors you have in the past to create your site plans and drawings.
Select the Land F/X Preferences. Within the General Preferences, select the Convert Colors button.
When you select Convert Colors, the Change All Layer Colors dialog box will appear. Using your Land F/X Line Color Worksheet as a guide, highlight each color that is to be changed, then click on Edit and indicate what the changed color is to be. Continue for all of the colors that need to be changed. It would be wise to record on the worksheet any additional or final changes you make while using this function.
After editing the colors that will need to be changed, select OK. When you do, the LFX Pens.dwg drawing will be opened. The Change Layer Colors function will be ready to run, and the following message will be displayed on the drawing:
This message indicates that after the color changes are made to the LFX Pens.dwg drawing, you will have to plot it with a revised CTB file, as explained in Step 3 to follow.
When the Convert Colors command is used, two files are saved with a backup in case you make a mistake and need to restore the backups to retrace your steps:
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The Setup.gcl file in the LandFX/Administration folder is changed to reflect the color changes. This allows for automatic color changes in the Land F/X code, and will automatically change the colors of any updated Land F/X drawings sent to you. The original Setup.gcl file is saved as a backup file in the LandFX/Administration folder as Setup.gcl.bak.
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The original LFX Pens.dwg drawing is also saved as a backup drawing in the LandFX/Administration folder, called LFX Pens.dwg.bak.
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After running the layer color changes on the drawing LFX Pens.dwg, plot the drawing to see if the line weights appear correct. To do this, you will need to revise the Land F/X LFX.ctb plot style table by combining your office standard ctb plot styles with this plot style. This file should already be in your AutoCAD Pot Style Table Path. If not, see Copy the Land F/X ctb to Your AutoCAD Plot Style Path.
Access the Plot Style Table Editor from within AutoCAD by selecting File, then Plot Style Manager where you will see the listing of ctb files from AutoCAD’s Plot Style files location. Double click on the LFX.ctb file, then go to Form View.
You will basically need to merge you office standard color plot widths into the Land F/X LFX.ctb color plot styles. From the Form View of the AutoCAD Plot Style Table Editor, go to each of your office standard colors and ensure that that color’s plotting requirements matches your office standards, such as its Lineweight, Screening, etc. Save this plot style with a different name, perhaps reflecting your company and Land F/X, such as XYZ-LFX.ctb.
Use this new plot style to plot the changed LFX Pens drawing, and see if the line weights are properly presented (a plotted view of this drawing is shown on Page 4 of this document). Observe that the plotted line weights in each line weight category should look like the same width, and that the category of widths get wider as the line weight increases, and that the screened lines match the screen intent.
If any of the lines are obviously incorrect, you may have to change or revise of the following:
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You also may not have correctly changed the colors on the Land F/X Change Colors function. If this is the case, don’t save the changes to your LFX Pens.dwg drawing, close it, and go back to Preferences and select Convert Colors again. This time you will have additional options, see the Convert Colors image below. The first option is Edit Colors, where you can edit the color changes you made previously, and run the function again on the LFX Pens.dwg drawing.
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The LFX Pens drawing, when correctly plotted, should reflect consistent line weight categories and screened tones as reflected in the following:
Now you will need to convert all Land F/X blocks to reflect the color changes required. To do this, simply go to Preferences as you did above, and again click on the Convert Colors button. This time Convert Colors dialog box will indicate:
Now you can click on Convert All Blocks and Land F/X will load each Land F/X block, change their line colors, and save each drawing with the changed line colors. This will occur as a batch operation on approximately 2,800 Land F/X blocks, and will take up to 20 minutes (depending on the network connection) to load and save all of the blocks.
Performing a batch operation on a large number of drawings, such as all of the blocks within Land F/X, will require some processing time after the batch operation is finished. It may take a minute or more for the computer to be accessible again after this batch operation, so be patient and wait until your curser is active again within AutoCAD.
