Whether you plot to scale or not, with different lineweights or not, in color or not, consider using a service bureau for some of your plotting. In-house plotting on your office’s output devices is great for small check plots on faster laser or inkjet printers. Large format plotting, on the other hand, can be slow and time consuming. If you need to plot lots of drawings, you may find yourself spending an afternoon loading paper, replenishing ink cartridges, and trimming sheets.
Good plotting service bureaus have big, fast, expensive plotters that you can only dream about owning. Also,
The only downside is that you need to coordinate with a service bureau to make sure it gets what it needs from you and can deliver the kinds of plots you need. Some service bureaus plot directly from your DWG files, while others ask you to make PLT (plot) files. Some service bureaus specialize in color plotting, while others are more comfortable with monochrome plotting and making blueline copies.
When you’re choosing a service bureau, look for one that traditionally has served drafters, architects, and engineers. These service bureaus tend to be more knowledgeable about AutoCAD, and they should have more plotting expertise than the desktop publishing, printing, and copying shops.
Whomever you choose, do some test plots well before the day when that important set of drawings is due. Talk to the plotting people and get a copy of their plotting instructions. Have the service bureau create some plots of a couple of your typical drawings and make sure they look the way you want them to.
To see the full range of AutoCAD colors available on your plotter, or to see how a particular plot style table affects plotting, plot Program FilesAutoCAD 2005SamplePlot Screening and Fill Patterns.dwg. The Screening 100% layout in this drawing contains color swatches for all 255 AutoCAD colors.
It’s a (Page) Setup!
Page setups specify the plotter, paper size, and other plot settings that you use to plot a particular tab of a particular drawing. AutoCAD maintains separate page setups for model space and for each paper space model layout (that is, for each tab you see in the drawing area). When you click the Apply to Layout button in the Plot dialog box (or turn on the Save Changes to Layout setting and then click OK to plot), AutoCAD stores the current plot settings as the page setup for the current tab.
You also can give page setups names and save them. The advantage of doing so is that you can switch quickly between different plot settings and copy plot settings from one drawing tab to another. Named page setups are stored with each drawing, but you can copy them from another drawing into the current one with the Page Setup Manager dialog box (described later in this section).
If your plotting needs are simple, you don’t need to do anything special with page setups. In the Plot dialog box, just click the Apply to Layout button or turn on the Save Changes to Layout setting to save any plotting changes with the tab you’re plotting.
If you want to get fancier, you can create named page setups in order to plot the same layout (or the model tab) in different ways, or to copy plot settings from one tab to another or one drawing to another. Click the Add button in the Plot dialog box to create a named page setup from the current plot settings. After you create a named page setup, you can restore its plot settings by choosing it from the Page Setup Name list.
For even greater control, choose File>Page Setup Manager to create, change, and copy page setups. In the Page Setup Manager dialog box, shown in Figure 12-9, you can create new page setups and modify existing ones. Click the Modify button to open the Page Setup dialog box, which is almost identical to the Plot dialog box. The primary difference is that you’re changing plot settings rather than actually plotting. The Set Current button copies the page setup that you’ve selected n the Page Setups list to the current layout tab. With the Import button, you can copy a layout from another drawing or drawing template (DWT) file.
Figure 12-9: The Page Setup Manager dialog box.
Continuing the Plot Dialog
In previous sections of this chapter, I cover most of the important options in the Plot dialog box. This section reveals a few more fine points that will make your plotting life easier. I don’t cover every minute, obscure, useful-only-at-cocktail party-discussions detail. I do point out some occasionally useful options that will increase your vocabulary when you’re communicating with the Plot dialog box.
Use the Plot dialog box’s quick help to find out more about any part of the dialog box:
1. Click the question mark next to the close button in the dialog box’s title bar.
2. Point the cursor at the part of the dialog box that confuses you and click.
3. Click the Help button at the bottom of the dialog box if the pop-up help isn’t enough.
? Printer/Plotter: As I describe in the section “Configure it out,” earlier in this chapter, you use the Name list to select the Windows system printer or nonsystem driver configuration that you want to use for plotting.
The Properties button opens the Plotter Configuration Editor dialog box, with which you can change media (type of paper) and other properties that are unique to the currently selected plotter or printer. In particular, you can define custom paper sizes.
As if AutoCAD’s Plot dialog box settings weren’t overwhelming enough, some plotter drivers hide important settings in the Plotter Configuration Editor dialog box, typically behind the Custom Properties button near the bottom of the dialog box. (For example, if you’re using the HP enhanced Windows system driver mentioned earlier in this chapter, you can click the Custom Properties button and then the More Sizes button to specify which paper sizes are available to you on the Plot Settings tab of the main Plot dialog box.)
To make matters even more confusing, if you make any changes in the Plotter Configuration Editor dialog box, AutoCAD prompts you to save the changes to a separate PC3 file. You should choose Save Changes to the Following File (that is, create a new AutoCAD-specific configuration that includes the revised settings) and type a configuration name that you’ll recognize later. When you want to plot with custom settings, remember to choose the AutoCAD-specific PC3 configuration near the end of the Plotter Configuration Name list, and not the Windows system printer configuration near the beginning of the list.
? Plot to File: If you need to plot to a file rather than directly to your plotter or network printer queue, turn on this option. When you click OK to plot, AutoCAD asks you for a plot file name and location.
This option is especially useful when you want to use the ePlot feature to publish a DWF file on a Web site. You also may need to create files to send to a plotting service bureau.
? Plot Stamp On: Use this option to turn on and off and configure the contents of a text string that AutoCAD adds automatically to the corner of each plot. The plot stamp can include useful information such as the drawing filename and plot date and time.
? Plot Area: Specify the area of the drawing to plot. Your choices include Display, Extents, and Window, regardless of whether you’re plotting a paper space layout or the model space tab. If you defined named views in the drawing, AutoCAD adds a View option. The additional choice is Layout for a paper
