Following the Plot

Looking at drawings on a computer screen and exchanging them with others via e-mail or Web sites is all well and good. But sooner or later, someone — maybe you! — will want to see a printed version. Printing drawings — or plotting, as CAD geeks like to call it — is much more complicated than printing a word-processing document or a spreadsheet. That's because you have to worry about things such as drawing scale, lineweights, title blocks, and weird paper sizes. I go deeper into plotting in Chapter 16, but this section gives you an abbreviated procedure that can help you generate a recognizable printed drawing.

Follow these steps to plot a drawing:

1. Click the Plot button on the Quick Access Toolbar.

   The Quick Access Toolbar is at the left end of the program's title bar, just to the right of the Application button. The Plot icon looks like an ordinary desktop printer.

   AutoCAD opens the Plot-Model dialog box, with the title bar showing what you're plotting (model space, in this case).

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

   The Plot dialog box reveals additional settings, as shown in Figure 3-15.

   

   Figure 3-15: The Plot dialog box with the More Options area visible.

3. In the Printer/Plotter area, select a printer from the Name drop-down list.
4. In the Paper Size area, use the drop-down list to select a paper size that's loaded in your printer or plotter.

   Anything Letter size (8½ × 11 inches) [A4 (210 × 297 mm)] or larger works for this example.

5. In the Plot Area, select Limits from the drop-down list.

   This is the entire drawing area, which you specified when you set up the drawing in the section “A Simple Setup,” earlier in this chapter.

6. In the Plot Offset area, select the Center the Plot check box.

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

7. In the Plot Scale area, deselect the Fit to Paper check box and choose 1:10 from the Scale drop-down list.

   1:10 is the scale used to set up the drawing (which I explain in the section “A Simple Setup,” earlier in this chapter). No prizes for guessing the metric equivalent of 1:10!

8. In the Plot Style Table (Pen Assignments) area, click the drop-down list and choose monochrome.ctb.

   The monochrome.ctb plot style table ensures that all your lines appear solid black, rather than as different colors or weird shades of gray. See Chapter 16 for information about plot style tables, and monochrome and color plotting.

9. Click Yes when a question dialog box appears, asking Assign This Plot Style Table to All Layouts?

   You can leave the remaining settings at their default values (refer to Figure 3-15).

   Some printers let you print closer to the edges of the sheet than do others. To find out the actual printable area of your own printer, move the mouse pointer to the postage-stamp-size partial preview in the middle of the Plot dialog box and pause. A tooltip appears, listing the Paper Size and Printable Area for the printer and the paper size that you selected.

10. Click the Preview button.

    If the plot scale you entered in the Plot dialog box is out of sync with the drawing's annotation scale, a Plot Scale Confirm dialog box appears, advising you that the annotation scale isn't equal to the plot scale. This drawing doesn't contain any text or dimensions, and I didn't bother making the hatch annotative, so it's fine to click Continue and generate the plot.

    Annotative scaling controls the printed size of text, dimensions, hatching, and other types of annotation objects at plot time — as long as the drawing's annotation scale matches the plot scale. I explain annotative objects in Chapter 13.

    The Plot dialog box disappears temporarily, and AutoCAD shows how the plot will look on paper. In addition, AutoCAD prompts you on the status bar as follows:

    Press pick button and drag vertically to zoom, ESC or ENTER to exit, or
               right-click to display shortcut menu.

11. Right-click in the preview area and choose Exit.
12. If the preview doesn't look right, adjust the settings in the Plot dialog box and look at the preview again until it looks right.
13. Click OK.

    The Plot Scale Confirm dialog box pops up again. You may be tempted to click Always Continue Under These Conditions, but I recommend against that until you've gained a little familiarity with annotative objects.

    The Plot dialog box closes. AutoCAD generates the plot and sends it to the printer. After generating the plot, AutoCAD displays a Plot and Publish Job Complete balloon notification from the right end of the status bar. (A Click to View Plot and Publish Details link displays more information about the plot job.)

14. Click the X (Close) button in the Plot and Publish Job Complete balloon notification.

    The balloon notification disappears.

    If you're not happy with the lineweights of the lines on your plot at this point, fear not. You can use the lineweights feature (Chapter 6) or plot styles (Chapter 16) to control plotted lineweights.

15. Press Ctrl+S to save the drawing.

Congratulations! You successfully executed your first plot in AutoCAD. Chapter 16 tells you more — much more — about AutoCAD's highly flexible (but occasionally perplexing) plotting system.