The scale, orientation, and placement of the print on the sheet.The sheet size to which you’re printing.The portion of the drawing you’re printing.The lineweight assigned to each object in your drawing.The job of getting your AutoCAD file to plot (electronically or as a hard copy) can be broken down into five tasks. Publish multiple layouts, and use Sheet Set Manager.Assign lineweights to drawing layers, and manage plot styles.Set up a drawing to be printed with page setups.I’ll discuss some other electronic formats later in this chapter, but for now it’s more important to know that the purpose of using a DWF plotter is to give you the basic principles for plotting, regardless of whether you have access to a printer or plotter. There is often a need to keep an electronic record of each submittal of a project, and the DWF format is one of the ways this is possible. In addition to ensuring your ability to plot to each of these formats, plotting to an electronic format similar to DWF or DWFX is not all that uncommon in industry. Because each plotter is slightly different, standardizing on this one virtual device will ensure that you’re able to follow each of the steps as they are discussed in this chapter. In this book, printing and plotting have the same meaning.Īlthough you may have a variety of small-format and large-format plotters attached to your computer, this chapter assumes as a standard the DWFx ePlot (XPS Compatible).pc3 plotter.
Otherwise, as far as Autodesk® AutoCAD® software is concerned, the differences between plotters and laser, inkjet, or electrostatic printers are minimal. Pen plotters have been virtually replaced by large-format inkjet or laser plotters with a few additional settings not commonly found on standard printing devices. But the terms are now used interchangeably. Printing used to refer to smaller-format printers, and plotting referred to pen plotters, most of which were designed for plotting large sheets. With today’s equipment, there is no difference between printing and plotting. Creating the Floor, Foundation, and Thresholds.Chapter 14: Using Layouts to Set Up a Print.Chapter 13: Managing External References.Chapter 11: Working with Hatches, Gradients, and Tool Palettes.Setting Up Multiple Attributes in a Block.Chapter 9: Using Dynamic Blocks and Tables.Chapter 8: Controlling Text in a Drawing.Chapter 7: Combining Objects into Blocks.Setting Properties of Layers and Objects.Chapter 6: Using Layers to Organize Your Drawing.Chapter 5: Developing Drawing Strategies: Part 2.Chapter 4: Developing Drawing Strategies: Part 1.Chapter 2: Learning Basic Commands to Get Started.Chapter 15: Printing a Drawing by Donnie Gladfelter AutoCAD 2014 and AutoCAD LT 2014: No Experience Required: Autodesk Official Press