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Batch plotting to hard copy and pdf help!


jt6572

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hey everyone,

i have just today finished plotting out 134 drawings as both pdfs and hard copies.

 

i started out by trying to use the Sheet set manager, but found it slowed my pc down a lot. also, the batch plot was easy to apply a page set up to multiple drawings.

 

however, this has still taken a huge amount of time to produce. from memory, i have been able to batch plot out several drawings as pdfs and then they have all printed out very quickly.

 

the problem may lay in the numerous x refs (particularly dense contour drawings) within them all?

 

maybe im wrong, and the pdfs were all done individually, but whatever the case, i would really appreciate some advice on the most efficient way to plot out this many drawings using the same pre-set page set up. because when you have a deadline, you cant afford to sit at your pc watching it grind away...

 

thank you :)

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This will do a more manual approach but plots to correct device or pdf or jpg etc. Its reasonably fast. You could script multiple dwgs Open dwg,load "plotpdf" to do a plot every dwg.

 

http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?69132-Printing-LISP-Help...&highlight=Printing-LISP

 

plot a range http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/showthread.php?84430-Move-layout-Rename-layouts-Goto-layout

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i would really appreciate some advice on the most efficient way to plot out this many drawings using the same pre-set page set up. because when you have a deadline, you cant afford to sit at your pc watching it grind away... )

 

It's a big job and it will take some time to do and some of that time means watching things grind away to make sure all is going well at your computer and the plotter. When you have a deadline, you need to allot an amount of time to accomplish this. I usually make a rough estimate and double it in order to allow for printing problems. If AutoCAD is struggling with outputting prints, plot from the PDFs. I would make at least two and probably more multi-page PDFs and plot from them.

 

If it is not your hardware that is limiting the speed, i.e. older or low spec network or PC, you may need to make sure all of you XREF files have been cleaned up and cleaned out of any extraneous information.

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hey everyone,

i have just today finished plotting out 134 drawings as both pdfs and hard copies.

 

i started out by trying to use the Sheet set manager, but found it slowed my pc down a lot. also, the batch plot was easy to apply a page set up to multiple drawings.

 

however, this has still taken a huge amount of time to produce. from memory, i have been able to batch plot out several drawings as pdfs and then they have all printed out very quickly.

 

the problem may lay in the numerous x refs (particularly dense contour drawings) within them all?

 

maybe im wrong, and the pdfs were all done individually, but whatever the case, i would really appreciate some advice on the most efficient way to plot out this many drawings using the same pre-set page set up. because when you have a deadline, you cant afford to sit at your pc watching it grind away...

 

thank you :)

 

Ive done both the lisp route and the batch plot. I find the batch plot to be the best option. Its easy to set up a page setup and apply to all drawings. As it was pointed out, these things just take time. The time to complete the project should include processing of pdf and hard copies, but that part is easy to overlook. It stands to reason that the more complex the drawings the longer it will take. There are some options you can dink with that might help optimize your setup, but it will still take some time to process.

 

You can try different "printers" There is the DWG to pdf printer, but i also have adobe installed as well as 'cute pdf'. These all have options that you can change like size and dpi (if there is raster work). I haven't trimmed out my system with any of those but im usually not in a pinch to have to squeeze things like these out.

 

You can also try turning off background printing. (options>plot and publish) though you cant do other things while its busy.

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thanks very much everyone.

i have found that unchecking the background plotting is a lot faster, but with the disadvantage of you then not being able to work whilst plotting out.

 

no biggie: i will just use whichever method suits the purpose, and it is not often such a large number of drawings need to go out. :)

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