Drawings exported from Inventor will not plot in black and white from AutoCAD

Autodesk Support

Mar 21, 2024

Products and versions covered

Issue:

After saving an Inventor file (.idw) to an AutoCAD drawing (.dwg), when attempting to plot the drawing from AutoCAD to monochrome (black and white), the plot preview and final output are in color.

Causes:

The colors in the AutoCAD drawing are RGB (True Color) instead of Index Color.

Solution:

Inventor uses RGB colors. The image below shows an example where the 'Tweak Trail (ANSI)' layer is using an RGB color - 0,0,255.

User-added image

Since AutoCAD has its own color index, monochrome.ctb only recognizes AutoCAD index colors and not RGB colors. Below image below shows how each color is defined in the monochrome.ctb file.

User-added image

In order to resolve this, in Inventor, select the "Use AutoCAD color indices for entities and layers" checkbox when saving as AutoCAD drawing.
(To access this option, select Mapping Option in Export Setting dialog and go to General tab.)

User-added image

Products:

AutoCAD Products; Inventor Products;

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