Best way to set US NCS for archicad 12

[Anonymous]

I am hoping that one of you AC Veterans out there can help me. The firm I am working for is trying to land a gov. job for the US Dept of VA and they req. strict usage of the US NCS. One can say that the CAD standard here can use a major upgrade as well too. Anyhow, I am given the task to implement a new cad standard for the office to use on this job and future jobs.

my questions are:

Whats the best and easiest/cheapest way for me to start this process for AC12?

In the US Dept. of VA website, they provide two files, a .ctb file and .lin that has the correct plot style table containing all VA and National CAD Standard compliant Pen Weights and Colors and Linetype definition file that contains VA specific Linetypes. Is there a way I can import these two autocad files into archicad12?

Sorry for the long explanations. I want to be as clear as possible.
Thank you all in advance.

-B

[Erich]

All the .ctb and .lin files are are pen settings and line types respectively. If you have a copy of Autocad in the office you can load these into Autocad, look as the settings and then set up an appropriate pen set/ line types in ArchiCAD. If you do not have a copy of Autocad perhaps you can get the documentation on paper so you can make the appropriate settings.

However, I suspect you will find that there is quite a bit more to the NCS requirements that these two files. I know that when I last needed to deal with this stuff, a good 6 years ago, we had quite a large binder with everything from required block, fonts, title blocks, etc. Perhaps someone a bit fresher than I am can respond as well.

[Erika Epstein]

There is/was also a set of "NCS standards for archicad" with sheet layouts etc. that came in Goodies/Add-ons. I think much of this has been incorporated into archicad.

[Da3dalus]

You won't be able to import the LIN linetype files into ArchiCAD directly. If you can get someone to import them into an AutoCAD DWG and draw one of each of the lines, you can then import the DWG. The the lines will come across into ArchiCAD format. If the feds have a DWG template file, it would be beneficial to import that as well.

As far as the pen weights, it would be best to map it manually based on a chart. There were several iterations based on previous versions. Also, ArchiCAD 12 has the "NCS Plot Pens" pen set in the default template.

I would also recommend getting the NCS literature. FYI, the NCS consists of 3 parts:
1. The Uniform Drawing System (UDS) published by CSI
2. The CAD Layer Guildelines (CLG) published by AIA
3. The US Coast Guard plotting standards (I've not seen this)
It's silly expensive (you can get the PDF for $410, or it's only $290 if you're an AIA CSI, or NIBS member), but you can get it here:
http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/ncs/