It is also useful to have greys plot as grey for hatching and shading and so on. I have found that sometimes it is useful for all your pens to plot in black and white, but to have red plot as red for a site boundary for example. With that in mind these are the basic colour assignments. Then use the other colours as and when they are required and assign specific line weights as you need them. Generally, it is easiest if you only use the basic colours, 1-10 for your general drawing. Just remember, everyone has their own way of doing things, so take from this what you will and find a way that works best for you. I will go into more detail about layering in a future post, just to make your AutoCad life, a little easier! It is also useful to set up a standard dwg file, that has all your standard layers and colours so that you can copy and paste into any new dwg without having to recreate your layering system all over again.

Not ideal in the workplace as you should conform to office standards, but very useful when you are going between different computers, at home, uni, library, laptop and so on. One thing that is key to know is that in Autocad you can save your own plot styles (ie, line weights assigned to colours) so that wherever you go you can use your own system. I will give you the standards I have come across the most and that seem to be more commonplace.

Generally, offices have their own standards and practices, which will vary from one organisation to the next, which adds to the confusion. However, as soon as you get out into the workplace this can fall apart. We had really good AutoCad training at uni and were given useful information on standards of practice. It is difficult to find standard colour/weight assignments and therefore you find yourself wondering if you are doing things correctly and have set things up ok. Lineweights and colours in Autocad can be a bit of a minefield when you first start out.

Download block plotter autocad