need help creating hi res image from dwg in AutoCAD 2013

[radwyn]

i am doing some artistic designing with AutoCAD 2013 and would like to create high resolution images from the drawing in order to make large high quality prints. i have found some tutorials on google but they all refer to accessing the 'Add a plotter wizard' in the tools menu but i do not see that option here in AutoCAD 2013. in fact, i can't seem to find any plot settings any where. i remember in the old AutoCAD you could go to the file menu and select 'plot' from there. but in this version it is no where to be found. sorry if this is a noob question but i just can't seem to get this thing moving. please help me!

[Mike_Taylor]

Personally I plot the image I want as a PDF the save the pdf as an image. I have not had good luck with plotters that plaot as an image file (they seemd to give a relatively poor quality). Bear in mind it was about 5-6 years ago I was using these plotters ao things may hve gotten better since then.

[ReMark]

Click on the big red "A" (browser button) in the upper left hand corner of your screen. On the drop down look to the left and find the word Print. One of many ways to plot/print a drawing from AutoCAD 2013.

 

You can also...

 

...type the word Plot or Print at the command line to bring up the Plot dialog window.

 

Or...

 

...you can look to the Ribbon, click on the Output tab, and look on the Plot panel for the Plot icon.

 

Or...

 

...use the PAGESETUP command.

[f700es]

Type "OP" to access the Options window and select the "Plot and Publish" tab. Here you will find the "Add or Configure Plotters" button. Here you can add a plot to jpg or tiff function. As Mike said you can always go PDF which can plotted out at any scale without loss of detail as it is a vector format.

[radwyn]

thanks guys! i was not aware that a pdf was a vector based image.. exported the pdf and put it into photoshop scaled way up with no problems. thank you!

[irneb]

Yep PDF is a hybrid format - it can contain both vector & raster. It depends on the source and how the "print" is implemented. But usually if you create a PDF from ACad it would be vectors.

 

If I need a raster file instead, then I usually use PDFCreator and set it to save as a PNG at a high res (something like 600DPI, though the file might get huge). I've never found ACad's built-in raster drivers to work properly, though I guess you could have used the DWG2PDF driver and then save-as to image (but that's an extra step methinks).