how to implement true color in ctb

i'm rolling out autocad 2004, yes 2004 not 2006 (its a long story) , and when i read the new features that it now has 16m colors, i always assumed that i would have more than 256 colors to assign weights from. i thought with the increased colors, i can block my 256 colors for black with varying lineweights and everything beyond that is color where my users are free to choose from without me having to assign the values on a read-only ctb. i can even have 1 ctb for both black and white and color printing. now i found out that it behaves as if it was in 2002(?) that you still have to replace a color from 256. i guess they meant only on layer color assignment?

i know it would be ridiculous to have 16m pens in the stb but i wished there is a way to achieve this. i can always replace maybe the darker colors because they are not used but it seems to be a workaround than a true solution to get 'true' colors.

am i looking at this the wrong way? any suggestion is welcome. thanks

 

"i know it would be ridiculous to have 16m pens in the stb" i meant ctb

 

In the olden days, entities only had color. There were 256 of them. To get
various types of printed output, users could assign different line weights
and patterns to these colors.

In today's world, entities can have 16 million colors. You can get these
entities to printed paper in various styles by applying style attributes.
Using the trick of mapping a color to a desired hardcopy output style is no
longer required. If you have a legacy situation and wish to stick with the
color-based approach, you can do so, but are limited to using the 256 colors
of old.

 

does autodesk have data on the percentages of stb users as against ctb users? i thought ctb being simpler to grasp by users would still be predominant. im just curious if stb is gaining ground and should i prepare my users for that switch in the future with stb having more benefits in the future.