how to plot a folder of dwg's to pdf without opening AutoCAD

[AutoMarcus]

Hi All

a colleague has asked me how he can quickly  plot to pdf hundreds of DWG files he has been sent just so he can view the contents.

 

I suggested true view.

 

however he asked is there a way to batch plot these all to pdf, I'm sure there are many ways.

 

I tried the batch plot function on Adobe Acrobat Pro, however it had an error that that function doesn't work in the 64 bit version of Adobe.

 

Any constructive thoughts or suggestions?

 

cheers

 

 

[SLW210]

Do you have AutoCAD? If so use Publish /BatchPlot. How to publish multiple drawings (Batch plot) to PDF in AutoCAD (autodesk.com)

 

 

 

 

[AutoMarcus]

14 hours ago, SLW210 said:

Do you have AutoCAD? If so use Publish /BatchPlot. How to publish multiple drawings (Batch plot) to PDF in AutoCAD (autodesk.com)

 

 

 

 

Hi, he has AutoCAD however he was hoping to not have to use it as we have limited licences

Edited September 7, 2023 by AutoMarcus

[BIGAL]

If you use accoreconsole it is very fast to do something like plot a dwg. I and many others have a plot all layouts etc lisp so this could be called for each dwg. The advantage with accoreconsole is that it does not open a dwg, just works on the database direct.

 

Even so in a script open a file plot  is still very fast. 

 

Are the 100 dwgs ready to plot ? ie they have say layouts all with one company title block. If they are model space and must choose an area etc then yes will be slow.

 

So answer some questions about the dwg's. If dwg's are the same post a sample dwg.

 

I did 88 layouts in one go and it just flashed took a couple of minutes but was done.

Edited September 7, 2023 by BIGAL

[SLW210]

There are online convertors, some should do a batch.

 

There are other programs as well, most if not all that can do it are probably not free, maybe Free Trial, though.

 

I have no personal experience with them, but 2 I know of are Autodwg DWG to PDF and AnyDWG to PDF.

 

If you have AutoCAD, it should only take a short while to convert them, so not sure why that's being avoided, nor why not just use DWG TrueView to view them or even create PDFs.

 

You could look into getting a version of Acrobat that will batch convert, but IIRC you still use AutoCAD for that as well.

 

There are quite a few Scripts, LISP, etc. around as well.