PLOTTING/PRINTING IN AUTOCAD

Once your page setup has been created, you are ready to print your drawings.

From the Ribbon Output tab > Plot panel, click the Plot button.

Command line: To start the Plot tool from the command line, type “PLOT” and press [Enter].

From the Page Setup list, select your newly created page setup and click OK to plot using the selected settings.

Additional Options

There are some additional settings in the Plot dialog box that aren’t available in the Page Setup dialog box.

Initially the Plot model will only show a few of the options. In the bottom right corner, click the More Options button to show the full properties.

The expanded dialog box will show.

Additional tools can be found in the Plot options section and include:

Plot in background, with this option un-ticked, the plot progress will display when you click OK. If this is ticked the progress will be hidden and you will be able to continue working in AutoCAD.

Plot stamp on will place a plot stamp on the drawing. Ticking this option will show a button to configure the plot stamp.

Clicking the button will show the Plot Stamp dialog where you can choose information, including Date and Time, Drawing name and Plot scale, to be printed on the drawing.

Save changes to layout If changes are made to the layout such as changing the printer, the changes will be saved to the Page Setup.

Print formats

During the process of a construction project, you will need to print hard-copy drawings, whether for planning consent, issuing drawings to other members of the design team, or when requesting information.

More commonly drawings are issued as digital copies via e-mail or a web portal. Issuing the Drawing file as an editable format is not recommended because the file can be modified by the recipient and, when printed, may not display as intended.

By default, AutoCAD includes printers for four non-editable formats:

DWF6 ePlot creates an Autodesk Drawing Web Format (.DWF) file. This is a vector format developed by Autodesk to print non-editable files in a lightweight format. A free viewer from Autodesk can be used to view these files. The free viewer is installed by default when installing AutoCAD.

DWG to PDF  creates an Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF). This is an extremely common format used by most industries to issue non-editable files. A free viewer from Adobe can be used to view these files and is pre-installed on many PCs and laptops.

Publish To Web JPG will create a JPG image file. The file is a raster format which, when zooming in, will degrade in quality. This format is not recommended for issuing drawings but can be useful for adding images to reports.

Publish To Web PNG will create a PNG image file. Similar to JPG, PNG is a raster format but is un-compressed and designed for exchanging images on the web. This is also not recommended for issuing drawings or using within a printing system that requires CMYK colours.