saving a drawing as a plot file.

i am soon doing some HVAC drawings for someone and they said that they want the drawings saved in plot format? because the place they take them to to get printed wants them in that format rather than a dwg file. so how do you save a drawing as a plot file?

use 'dwg to pdf' printer & save it in pdf format. most of the printing facilities can open pdf files & print directly from it.

you get a plot file by ticking the "Print to file" box in the plot dialogue box. The problem here is that the resultant file is only suitable for an identical printer. Dipali's suggestion of PDF is probably safer but if that is unacceptable either set up your own HPGL plotter or find out what they have got.

Be aware if you plot to file to make a .plt file, you need the driver for the plotter.

i am soon doing some HVAC drawings for someone and they said that they want the drawings saved in plot format? because the place they take them to to get printed wants them in that format rather than a dwg file. so how do you save a drawing as a plot file?

Find out what format PLT files this print service requires.

Obtain the correct driver.

Create a PC3 file from this driver and set it up to plot to file.

Note: If the print service can plot DWF files, then you already have this installed.

thanks for the replies, i will find out exactly what the printers want. i would of thought a pdf would have been easier.

Years ago I worked in that way; the plotter was located in the neighbor building and the local network was very slow. So I went plotting like normally, with all the settings, but I checked the "plot to file". When I had enough files to worth a walk, I just burned them on a CD and I plotted them right from the computer used as printer server.

For this specific task, the PLT way is faster. Generally speaking, I prefer the PDF files.