How to Delete Plot Styles in Autocad Drawings
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2020-07-16,09:09 PM #1
Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" I am having a bear of a time trying to figure out how both of my templates are referencing 15 (FIFTEEN!) Plot Styles that, as far as I can tell, are not being referenced in the templates in any capacity. I've actually tracked down their origins to an older client of ours as I've found the STB files they provided us and somehow it got referenced in our template (not even sure how). Never noticed it back then, but now that we're on the STB train I can see them staring at me in the face when I review Plot Styles and I want to nuke them with extreme prejudice. I have even gone so far as to go on a purging spree in the templates to delete out all my blocks, my styles, my layers, my anything just to see if I could get those styles to show up as able to be purged. Nothing I have come up with has yielded any results, but I can start a new drawing from a blank template and then when I run the from template command to bring in a layout it brings all the garbage plot styles with it.
I have been trying to do some reading on this to figure out how CAD handles plot styles, I've always been under the impression that items being referenced somewhere in a drawing generally can't be deleted until the reference is removed and that's how I've been approaching this, but the closest I have gotten to solving this mystery was in another thread where someone responding simply said "The DWG is in Named Plot Style mode and remembers the STB it is "supposed" to be referencing"
I really am at a lose here for trying to find a way to get CAD to properly reference them again so it can acknowledge they aren't being used and remove them. I have even tried converting back to CTB to see if I could purge them, if setting the default plot table to one of their STB files would reassociate them, etc.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Last edited by CCarleton; 2020-07-16 at 09:44 PM.
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2020-07-17,03:19 AM #2
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" If the Plot Style set can no longer be found it will display with the error triangle indicating it could not be found.
As soon as all of the references to those Plot Styles are removed they should no longer show up unless they were found in the path.
It's common practice to add shortcuts to other folders containing Plot Styles in the Plot Style Manager folder. Check those folders as well because they must still exist.
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2020-07-17,04:24 PM #3
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" Hi Tom,
Just to be clear here I am not talking about the Plot Style TABLE. I get that part of how CAD looks for the tables.
I have uploaded what I am seeing when I go to change my plot style in a layer, in particular are the Black_, Color_, Screened_ ones. I know where the Style_ ones are coming from and they're scrubbed from the template now. Are you saying that if I nuke out all the client's STB files from the server that they will disappear? Because I can try that, but I don't believe it as starting a blank template will not show them as items in the template that can or cannot be purged.
I actually went far back to 2016 where we had a different version of the template and was able to find those Black, Color, Screened plot styles in our CTB version. They've apparently been there a long time, and unfortunately when I was starting a new template from fresh I accidentally used the from template command and brought a ton of unwanted stuff (mostly layers and C3D styles with said layers embedded) over from it. Thought I scrubbed all the unwanted noise away when I did that, but this appears to be one of the final remnants.
Thanks
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2020-07-17,05:11 PM #4
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" Interesting, there must be some nested objects that are calling those names. Have you tried the superpurge add-on? if that doesn't get them, maybe try posting in customization for a MergePlotStyles routine that could crash all the missing styles into a valid name.
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2020-07-17,06:55 PM #5
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" They're assigned to some object which could be part of a block definition or a layout.
If you have a Plot Style you want to change them all to save the drawing as a DXF, open it with an ASCII text editor, do a search and replace for Style_1, etc…, save and reopen with AutoCAD.
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2020-07-17,07:41 PM #6
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" Usually it's from inserting blocks or drawings that were set up with different STB Plot Styles.
Wanting to use an established STB we started out using Autodesk-MONO.stb as it allowed us to plot Black, Color, and 9 different grayscales with an OOTB STB everyone already had.
Later we switched to FDOT.stb which is the standard from Florida Dept. of Transportation.
Changing every Plot Style used in existing blocks, drawings, and layouts was a pain but we got through it.
I do like STB's but hope I never have to change ours again.
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2020-07-20,03:33 PM #7
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" Hi Tom and Cadtag,
Almost went with superpurge, but decided to try Tom's DXF suggestion, found the style names and just replaced them with another I was using. I'm not 100% familiar with DXFs, but doing that wiped out the plot style for any layer that used it, but I just reassigned it.
I think it worked though, went to check for unable to be purged and they're gone.
Thanks for the help!
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2020-07-20,03:57 PM #8
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" Glad it worked out!
Originally Posted by CCarleton 
Hi Tom and Cadtag,
Almost went with superpurge, but decided to try Tom's DXF suggestion, found the style names and just replaced them with another I was using. I'm not 100% familiar with DXFs, but doing that wiped out the plot style for any layer that used it, but I just reassigned it.
I think it worked though, went to check for unable to be purged and they're gone.
Thanks for the help!
You're going to have to check all your templates, block and detail or other drawings that may be inserted by coworkers to stop it from happening again.
Better to fix them now before you find one of them in 20 other drawings.
If you know which block or drawing they came from after fixing them reinserting them in should clean up objects and layers of drawings they were inserted in.
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2020-07-21,06:10 PM #9
Re: Remove STB Plot Styles labeled as "(missing)" Well I came in to say I think I was going to be good on accidentally bringing them back in, but another CAD user just ran into an issue and we've basically discovered that the DXF solution seems to have removed all C3D entities from our template so I had to revert it (thankfully I was smart enough to archive it first). So either I did that wrong or that might not be an option.
Downloaded superpurge and it is uninterested in purging the Plot Styles as well, essentially says the same thing as regular purge in that they are unpurgable.
I think I am back to the drawing board...
edit: Oooh I just found hard superpurge. This is about to get interesting...
edit2: Knock on wood I think that worked without ruining anything C3D-wise.
Last edited by CCarleton; 2020-07-21 at 06:21 PM.
Source: https://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?175025-Remove-STB-Plot-Styles-labeled-as-quot-(missing)-quot
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