338 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

Whatever the reason, you’ll want to print drawings at some point — probably sooner rather than later. Depending on where you are in a project, plotting is the pop quiz, midterm, or final exam of your drawing-making semester. This chapter helps you ace the test.

You Say Printing, We Say Plotting

Plotting originally meant creating hard-copy output on a device that was capable of printing on larger sheets, such as D size or E size (or A1 or A0 for the metrically inclined), that measure several feet (or a meter or more) on a side. (See Chapter 4 for information about drafting-paper sizes.) These plotters often used pens to draw, robot-fashion, on large sheets of vellum or drafting film. The sheets could then be run through diazo blueline machines — copying machines that create blueline prints — to create less-expensive copies. Printing meant creating hard-copy output on ordinary printers that used ordi- nary-sized paper, such as A size (letter size, 81⁄2 x 11 inches) or B size (tabloid or ledger size, 11 x 17 inches): A4 or A3 for you metric folk.

Nowadays, AutoCAD and most CAD users make no distinction between plotting and printing. AutoCAD veterans usually say “plotting,” so if you want to be cool, you can do so, too.

Whatever you call it, plotting an AutoCAD drawing is potentially more complicated than printing a word-processing document or a spreadsheet. CAD has a larger range of different plotters and printers, drawing types, paper sizes, and output procedures than other computer applications. AutoCAD tries to help you tame the vast jungle of plotting permutations, but you’ll probably find that you have to take some time to get the lay of the land and clear a path to your desired hard-copy output. As we indicate in the Introduction section to this book, after you find your sweet spot, plotting actually becomes quite routine.

The Plot Quickens

After reading the preceding paragraph, you probably realize that you’re not going to master AutoCAD plotting in five minutes. That doesn’t change the fact that your boss, employee, wife, husband, construction foreman, or 11-year-old daughter wants a quick check plot of your drawing.

Plotting success in 16 steps

Here’s the quick, cut-to-the-chase procedure for plotting a simple drawing — a mere 16 steps! This isn’t as bad as it sounds, however, because you can later see how to save the procedure specifications so they can be reused

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with considerably less effort. This procedure assumes that you plot in model space: that is, that clicking the Model button on the status bar shows you the drawing in a way that you want to plot. (We cover plotting paper space layout tabs in the upcoming section, “Plotting the Layout of the Land.”) This procedure doesn’t deal with controlling plotted lineweights; see the “Plotting Lineweights and Colors” section, later in this chapter, for those details. It should, however, result in a piece of paper that bears some resemblance to what AutoCAD displays on your computer monitor.

Follow these steps to make a simple, not-to-scale, monochrome (black-and- white) plot of a drawing:

1.Open the drawing in AutoCAD.

2.Click Model (not the MODEL/PAPER button) on the status bar to ensure that you’re plotting the model space contents. If you have the Model and Layout tabs displayed, rather than the status bar buttons, click the Model tab.

We explain model space and paper space in Chapters 4 and 5, and how to plot paper space layouts in the section, “Plotting the Layout of the Land,” later in this chapter.

3.Zoom to the drawing’s current extents; click the Zoom Extents button

on the Navigation bar (if necessary, click the tiny down arrow below the Zoom button and choose Zoom Extents from the menu). Or type Z, press Enter, type E, and then press Enter again.

The extents of a drawing consist of a rectangular area just large enough to include all the objects in the drawing.

4.To display the Plot dialog box, click the Plot button on the Quick Access Toolbar.

The Plot dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 16-1.

AutoCAD automatically appends whatever you’re about to plot in the dialog box’s title bar. For example, in Figure 16-1, the dialog box title is Plot – Model. If you’re plotting a layout and haven’t changed the layout name, the title might be Plot – Layout1. If you have changed the layout name, the dialog box title will be Plot – First Floor Plan (or whatever you renamed it). In this book, we call it (simply) “the Plot dialog box.”

5.In the Printer/Plotter area, select a device from the Name drop-down list.

For your first quick-and-dirty plot, select Default Windows System Printer pc3, assuming that your computer has a generic printer attached to

it. If you don’t have a system printer connected, choose Microsoft XPS Document Writer. This will create a file that can be viewed with Internet Explorer.

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340 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

More Options button

Figure 16-1: The Plot dialog box.

6.In the Paper Size area, select a paper size that’s loaded in your printer or plotter.

For most generic Windows desktop printers this will be Letter (8.5" x 11"), ANSI A-size (11" x 8.5"), or ISO A4 (210mm x 297mm)

7.In the Plot Area area (sponsored by the Department of Redundancy Department), select Extents from the What to Plot drop-down list.

This will plot all your drawing.

8.In the Plot Offset (Origin Set to Printable Area) area, select the Center the Plot check box.

Alternatively, you can specify offsets of 0 (zero) or other amounts in order to position the plot at a specific location on the paper.

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9.In the Plot Scale area, select the Fit to Paper check box.

For most real plotting, you’ll plot to a specific scale. Select the Fit to Paper check box for now to get our quick-and-dirty plot. We cover plotting to a specific scale in the “Instead of fit, scale it” section, later in this chapter for guidance.

10.Click the More Options button (at the bottom-right corner of the dialog box, next to the Help button).

The Plot dialog box reveals additional settings, as shown in Figure 16-2.

Figure 16-2: The expanded Plot dialog box.

11.In the Plot Style Table (Pen Assignments) area, choose monochrome. ctb or monochrome.stb from the drop-down list.

If AutoCAD asks whether you want to assign this plot style table to all layouts, answer No for the time being.

12.In the Plot Options area, make sure that the Plot with Plot Styles check box is selected and also that the Save Changes to Layout check box is deselected, as shown in Figure 16-2.

Leaving the Save Changes to Layout check box deselected tells AutoCAD to use any plot settings changes that you make only for this plot. AutoCAD will revert to the original plot settings the next time you plot the drawing.

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342 Part III: If Drawings Could Talk

After you become confident with plotting, you may want to select this check box so that AutoCAD does save your plotting settings changes as the default. Alternatively, click the Apply to Layout button to make the current plot settings the default for future plotting of this tab (that is, the Model tab) in this drawing.

13.In the Drawing Orientation area, choose Portrait or Landscape.

The icon (the letter A on a sheet) in the lower-right corner may help you decide on the right orientation. If not, the full preview in the next step will tell you for sure.

14.Click the Preview button and check to make sure that the drawing appears on the paper at the correct orientation and size, shown in Figure 16-3, and then right-click and choose Exit to return to the Plot dialog box.

Figure 16-3: A preview of coming plot-tractions.

15.If you find any problems in the preview, adjust the plot settings (for example, Plot Area, Plot Scale, or Drawing Orientation) and repeat the preview until the plot looks right.

16.Click OK to create the plot.

When AutoCAD finishes generating and sending the plot, it displays a Plot and Publish Job Complete balloon notification from the status bar. If you decide that you don’t want to see these notifications, right-click the Plot/Publish Details Report Available icon near the right end of the status bar and deselect Enable Balloon Notification.

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