AutoCAD 2005 for Dummies

or want to work with printed drawings. Perhaps you thought that using AutoCAD means you don’t have to rely on hard-copy versions of drawings, but can view them on-screen instead. Even if that’s true, you may need to give hard-copy prints to your less savvy colleagues who don’t have AutoCAD. You may want to make some quick prints to pore over during your bus ride home. You may find that checking drawings the old-fashioned way — with a hard- copy print and a red pencil — turns up errors that managed to remain hidden on the computer screen.

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, I 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, that measure several feet on a side. (See Chapter 3 for information about drafting paper sizes.) These plotters often used pens to draw, robot-fashion, on large sheets of vellum or Mylar. The sheets could then be run through diazo blueline machines — copying machines that create blueline prints — in order to create less-expensive copies. Printing meant creating hard-copy output on ordinary printers that used ordinary sized paper, such as A size (letter size, 8??11 inches) or B size (tabloid or ledger size, 11?17 inches).

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

Whatever you call it, plotting an AutoCAD drawing is considerably more complicated than printing a word processing document or a spreadsheet. CAD has a larger range of different plotters and printers, drawing types, 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.

  The plotting system in AutoCAD 2005 is essentially the same as the one that Autodesk introduced in AutoCAD 2000, but with a reorganized, somewhat less imposing Plot dialog box. In addition, Autodesk has improved the page setups feature and added background plotting. I describe all these changes in this chapter.

Get with the system

One of the complications you face in your attempts to create hard copy is that AutoCAD has two distinct ways of communicating with your plotters and printers. Operating systems, and the programs that run in them, use a special piece of software called a printer driver to format data for printing and then send it to the printer or plotter. When you configure Windows to recognize a new printer connected to your computer or your network, you’re actually installing the printer’s driver. (“Bring the Rolls around front, James. And bring me a gin and tonic and a D-size plot while you’re at it.”) AutoCAD, like other Windows programs, works with the printers you’ve configured in Windows. AutoCAD calls these system printers because they’re part of the Windows system.

But AutoCAD, unlike other Windows programs, can’t leave well enough alone. Some output devices, especially some larger plotters, aren’t controlled very efficiently by Windows system printer drivers. For that reason, AutoCAD comes with specialized nonsystem drivers (that is, drivers that are not installed as part of the Windows system) for plotters from companies such as Hewlett Packard, Xerox, and Oce. These drivers are kind of like nonunion workers. They ignore the tidy rules for communicating with Windows printers in order to get things done a bit more quickly and flexibly.

Using already-configured Windows system printer drivers usually is easiest, and they work well with many devices — especially devices that print on smaller paper, such as laser and inkjet printers. However, if you have a large plotter, you may be able to get faster plotting, better plot quality, or more plot features by installing a nonsystem driver. To find out more, choose Contents>Driver and Peripheral Guide>Use Plotters and Printers in the AutoCAD online help system.

  The AutoCAD 2005 CD includes a Windows system printer driver for HewlettPackard DesignJet large format printers. This driver is optimized for CAD plotting. To install the driver, load your AutoCAD 2005 CD, click Install, and then click Hewlett Packard DesignJet Printer Drivers.

Configure it out

For now, you simply should make sure that AutoCAD recognizes the devices that you want to use for plotting. The following steps show you how:

1. Launch AutoCAD and open an existing drawing or start a new, blank drawing.

2. Choose Tools>Options to open the Options dialog box, and click the Plot and Publish tab.

3. Click the drop-down arrow to view the list just below the Use As Default Output Device option, as shown in Figure 12-1.

Figure 12-1: System and nonsystem printer configurations

The list includes two kinds of device configurations, designated by two tiny, difficult-to-distinguish icons to the left of the device names:

 • A little laser printer icon, with a sheet of white paper coming out the top, indicates a Windows system printer configuration.

 • A little plotter icon, with a piece of paper coming out the front, indicates a nonsystem (that is, AutoCAD- specific) configuration.

  The nonsystem configuration names always end in pc3, because they’re stored in special AutoCAD Printer Configuration version 3 files. So, if you can’t tell the difference between the icons, look for the pc3 at the end of the name. 

4. Verify that the list includes the printers and plotters that you want to have available in AutoCAD.

If not, choose Start>Printers and Faxes (in Windows XP) or Start>Settings>Printers (in Windows 2000), launch the Add Printer Wizard, and follow the instructions. If your printer isn’t in the default Windows list, cancel the wizard and hunt down a driver disk that came with your printer, or, better yet, download the current driver from the printer manufacturer’s Web site.

5. Choose the output device that you want to make the default for new drawings.

6. Click OK to close the dialog box and retain any change that you made in the previous step.

  You use the AutoCAD Plotter Manager Add-A-Plotter Wizard to create nonsystem driver configurations. (Choose File>Plotter Manager to display a window containing a shortcut to the wizard.) This wizard is similar to the Windows Add Printer Wizard; if you can handle adding an ordinary printer in Windows, you probably can handle adding a nonsystem plotter configuration to AutoCAD. When you complete the wizard steps, AutoCAD saves the information in a PC3 (Plot Configuration version 3) file.

A Simple Plot

Okay, so you believe me. You know 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 son 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 procedure assumes that you plot in model space — that is, that the Model tab at the bottom of the drawing area