New to Batch Plot

[mrromeo333]

I'm new to AutoCAD and I need to create over 100 drawings to pdf. I can do it by file and print with a single drawing. Is there a way to do a batch plot that will print all the drawing to pdf?

I need step by step as new to CAD.

Thanks in advance,

Romeo

[Spageddie]

Have you tried batch plotting to PDF ?
There are few of them around...

[mrromeo333]

Spageddie, I'm new to AutoCAD so I haven't tried anything yet. I only tried publishing in AutoCAD but that only creates dwf's.

I would apreciate if you give me a how to guide so I can start somewhere.

Thanks.

[Spageddie]

The autocad batch plotter may be starting point...
Goto Start -> Programs -> YourAutocad -> select Batch Plot Utility
This launch a new session of autocad and open the batch plot dialog ..

Step to use are..
1/ Add the drawings
2/ Set the plotting paramters
3/ Initialise plotting.

Which version of autocad are you using ?

[mrromeo333]

Thanks for the quick response,

I'm using AutoCAD2004. I checked and I don't have the Batch Plot Utility.

[Spageddie]

Try looking the installation directory ... look for a file named batchplt.exe

[Spageddie]

If you have no luck with this then you mave to purchase a batch plotter/convertor...

There are a few around .. here is a link to one of them http://www.geowebtech.com/acad2pdf.html

[dbroada]

We use a batch plotter that I wrote for drawings but we have just bought this http://anydwg.com/dwg2pdf/ for PDFs. There's a couple of little "features" I could do without but it's got us out of trouble this week. (400+ pdfs required to get a milestone payment)

[Spageddie]

dbroada wrote:

We use a batch plotter that I wrote for drawings

If you don't mind my asking...what did you write the batchpotter in ?
I wrote one in VBA the works nicely, which I have given the ability to do electronic files such as jpgs, tiffs and PDFs but it require that a PDF printer driver be installed...

[dbroada]

It's not really a batch plotter but an AutoCAD script generator, specifically for writing a plot script IYSWIM. I also have a script generator which reads a template and fills in the gaps. They are both writen in VB6.

For PDFs we used to ooutput an EPS file and then let acrobat distiller create the PDF files but I haven't installed distiller on my new machine for various reasons. CutePDF is the company standard but in our (free or cheap) version you have to type the file name into a box which is why how I managed to get a project to buy us the DWGtoPDF software.

I also wrote a batch plotter in VBA but could only get it to run reliably in MD mode. We want to run in SD mode as we often have to print about 500 drawngs at one go and AutoCAD doesn't like that many drawings open at a time. (and I don't trust our network that much either)

Interestingly I was about to ask you what you wrote yours in (I noticed in a previous post) when I spotted this post of yours.