hello all,

I have a two pronged question if anyone might be able to shed some light on either of them I would very appreciative.

1. Named Plot Styles

Does anyone here use named plot styles in autocad rather than color plot styles?

Ive been working my way back to autocad (im an on/off user i generally use microstation at the 9-5, autocad for out of the "office")

I have typically used color plot styles. But i was wondering if it would make sense to use named plot styles.

Scenario:

I am doing a 2400 sq ft residential addition/alteration and have produced a fair amount of drawings for the job, all the files are color plot styled and are quality checked against a *.dws office master file.
I have my layers organized so they are something like this:

A-WALL-FULL-N (full height wall - proposed)
A-WALL-FULL-E (full height wall - existing)
A-WALL-FULL-D (full height wall - demolition)

the issue is that I want to be able to control the colors in the drawing however when I print i want proposed to be hardline and all the existing to be 70% graytone, however I dont want to have to control this by color because then all the existing info looks gray on the screen and if i use viewport overrides then i have to save the layer state and use that through the entire set of drawings.

Seems like a pain, the reason i am drawn to the named plot styles is so i can have a full color palette and have three plus plot styles, proposed, existing, demo.... and all the colors per object can stay as whatever they are on the screen, they will just plot as gray. All i have to do is just filter the layer stack by (*-E) for example and apply the "EXISTING" plot style to those layers.

Hope youre still following.

Is this the most efficient way of working? Does anyone here work in this manner?

2. Importing Layers

I tend to keep all the layers for the entire office organized in the *.dws file and as I am generating work, if i need new layers i make them in the *.dws file and to get the layer into the new file, I draw a line on that layer and copy the line into the new drawing (bringing the layer with it and then delete the line) which synchronizes the standard file with the existing drawing file.

All files get checked daily against the standards file to make sure there are no strays and I never purge empty layers just in case so the office layers are always there in every drawing.

I feellike this is a total waste of time this making of layers, drawing lines and copying, yada yada.....

Is there a shortcut to synchronizing the standards file against an existing drawing (importing layers?), I feel like if the standards file has a layer, and the existing drawing is checked against it, autocad should update the existing file to include that new layer, but it doesnt - it only fixes non-conforming layers/linetypes/dimstyles, etc....)

Does anyone organize their layers in an excel spreadsheet and then import them into autocad? that way when the *.dws file opens it checks the excel file for new layers so it is always updated

Hope this all makes sense

thanks all