AutoCAD Page setup and Printing Basic

Contents
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1 Introduction

2 Layout: Model Space vs. Paper Space

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3 Viewports
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3.1 Creating viewports

3.2 Activating a Viewport

3.3 Set viewport scale

3.4 Hide the viewport border from the plot

4 Line weights and printing colors

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4.1 Color Tables

4.2 Using Color Tables

4.3 Object Color

2.1 Page Setup

5 Plotting
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5.1 Preview the plot

5.2 Plotting a Layout

6 Related information

Introduction
This tutorial covers how to make a basic page setup in AutoCAD in order to print your
drawing(s).
Printing in AutoCAD is (historically) called plotting.

This tutorial assumes that you're drawing is set up in millimeters (in model space, 1
unit represents 1 mm). Please make sure you're drawing and units are set up correctly!

Layout: Model Space v.s. Paper Space

Drawings are constructed in Model Space, visible in the Model tab in AutoCAD. There
is also one or more Layout Tabs. These display the contents of a Layout, also referred
to as Paper Space. As the name suggests, these are to create layouts intended for
plotting (printing) your drawings on paper.

Switch to the Layout 1 tab which should be present by default in new drawings:

By default, AutoCAD creates a white sheet with one viewport that displays the contents
of your model space. More on that a little further on. First you have to setup your paper:

Page Setup
Click right on the Layout tab and choose Page Setup Manager...:

The following dialog will display:

AutoCAD selects the active Layout by default, so you can proceed by clickingModify for
the selected Layout. The Page Setup dialog will be displayed:

Here you can set paper sizes, the type of printer that will be used, etc. In this example
we're creating an A3 Layout to be printed to PDF using the Adobe PDF Plotter.
1. Select the Adobe PDF plotter (or other printer that suits your specific goal)
2. Set the Paper Size to the desired format; A3 in this example
3. Make sure the Plot Scale is set to 1 mm = 1 unit
4. Choose the desired Drawing orientation

That's all for now. We will make the final (very important) configurations a little later on.

Viewports
Your drawing should display one or more parts of your drawing that you've created in
Model Space. This is done by means of viewports, which are literally a view port into
your Model Space. By default AutoCAD creates one viewport for you.
You can move, scale and transform this viewport just like any other AutoCAD object in
Model Space.

It's recommended to place your viewport object(s) in a separate layer.

Creating viewports
You can create a new viewport through the menu View > Viewports > 1 Viewport
Youre asked to pick both opposite corners for a rectangular viewport.

Activating a Viewport
When you double click inside a viewport it becomes active. The border is displayed
as a thick line and the Paper-/Model Space indicator in the bottom switches to MODEL:

When you double click outside a viewport (somewhere on your paper), the viewport is
deactivated and you're back in Paper Space.

Set viewport scale

When a viewport is active, you can use the regular navigation and zoom tools to select
the part of the Model Space that is displayed and at which zoom level (scale).
To get your scale accurate, for instance at 1 to 200 (1:200), you can use the zoom
command. We assume your drawing is set up in millimeters in Model Space.
1. Type z [enter] for zoom
2. Enter the scale: 1/200xp for a scale of 1:200. Don't forget the suffix xp which tells
AutoCAD to relate the zoom scale to Paper Space units.
If your drawing was set up in meters instead of millimeters, i.e.: one model space unit
represents 1 meter, you should use 1000/200xp in the example above!

Hide the viewport border from the plot

When you plot your layout, it will also plot the border of the viewport (the lines of the
viewport object). If don't want the borders to be plotted, you can use the Plot setting of
the layer your viewport is in. It's assumed you've created a separate layer for your
viewport(s).
Open the Layer manager and click the small plotter icon in the Plot column for the layer
your viewport is in. A red line will appear through the icon indicating that the layer will
not be plotted; the contents of the viewport will still be plotted though.

Line weights and printing colors

There are several ways to print your lines in a certain color and line weight. In this
tutorial we're using the method using Color Tables.

Color Tables
The Color Table translates the object's color into properties such as color and line
weight. You can create a Color Table from scratch, but to make thing a bit more
convenient, we will be using a pre-made Color Table. You can modify this one later
when desired.
You can download our pre-made example From our website (zipped). The colors are set
to correspond with the following line weights:

Using Color Tables

First we have to make sure AutoCAD can find the Color Table we're going to use. The
file needs to be in a specific location:
1. Download the pre-made Color Table from our website and save it.
2. Open the location where you saved the file and unzip it.
3. Right-click the zwart-wit.ctb file and choose copy
4. in AutoCAD go to File > Plot Style Manager

An explorer window opens:

5. Paste the file you've copied earlier into this location

6. That's it, AutoCAD can now locate the file. You can close the Plot Style Manager

Now AutoCAD can find the file, but it doesn't know yet that it should use this Color
Table. So next we're going to assign this Color Table to the Layout(s).
1. Open the Page Setup for your Layout.
2. For Plot style table choose zwart-wit.ctb from the pull-down. If it's not there, you probably
didn't copy the ctb file to the correct location.
3. Optionally you could check Display plot styles if you want to see the effect of the Color
table in your Layout view.

Object Color
So the color of an object determines how it will be printed. It's recommended to use the
layer color to set the color for an object. So organize your layers and layer colors in
such a way that it suits your desired printing properties.

You could set the color for each object individually, but then it's harder to make changes
afterwards. For a few exemptions this may work, but avoid using 'per object' colors as
much as you can.

Plotting
Once you've completed the basic setup, you're ready to plot your Layout.

Preview the plot

When you've enabled Display plot styles in the Page Setup, you can get a rough idea
about how your drawing would look when it's printed.

Using the LWT button in the bottom toolbar, you can enable or disable the displaying of
line weights in your Layout.
To get the most accurate preview, you can use File > Plot Preview, or the
Preview button from the Page Setup dialog.

Plotting a Layout
Click right on the tab of the Layout you want to plot. Choose Plot.
When you've selected a 'real' plotter, your drawing will be plotted as soon as you
click OK in the Plot dialog. In this tutorial we've selected the Adobe PDF plotter. Once
you click OK, your drawing is plotted to an Adobe PDF file. You will be prompted to
select a location where to save the PDF file.
If you're using the Adobe PDF plotter, using the Plot preview function isn't really
necessary. You can just plot to a PDF file and see if it's what you wanted.

AutoCAD Page setup and Printing Advanced

Contents
[hide] [1 2 3 4 ]

1 Introduction

2 Viewports
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2.1 Rotate the view inside a viewport

2.2 Non-rectangular viewports

3 Color Tables
3.1 Modifying a Color Table

4 Exporting/Printing 3D viewports with hidden lines as Vector drawings

5 Related information

Introduction
Viewports

Rotate the view inside a viewport

We're using a number of UCS-related functions. It might be convenient to activate the USC
toolbar: RMB-click on an empty part of you toolbar space, choose ACAD > UCS.

To rotate the model space within one of the viewports, the following steps must be
taken:
1. Activate the viewport
2. Choose Rotate Z from the UCS toolbar, or use the command ucs, z. Enter the rotation in
degrees (counter clockwise). The UCS is now rotated within the viewport.

3. Enter the command plan. Select Current UCS (default) and press enter. The model
space within the viewport will now be rotated so as to align the viewports UCS with the
paper space UCS.

Non-rectangular viewports
You can draw any shape you want to be used as a viewport. This must be a closed
(poly)line. Use the Close option when drawing a polyline to make sure it's closed.
Go to View > Viewports > Object and select the closed line to be turned into a
viewport.

Color Tables

Modifying a Color Table

In the Page Setup dialog, click the Edit button next to the list where the Plot style table
is selected:

The following dialog will show:

For each color you can view or edit the settings, such as: print color, line weight, etc.

Exporting/Printing 3D viewports with hidden lines as Vector drawings

If you have a 3D solid model that you want a line drawing of with the hidden lines
removed, you could set the display mode to 3D Hidden. But this will automatically
export the viewport as a bitmap image and not vectors. Use this procedure to be able to
export or print is in vector format:
1. Enter the dispsilh command, press enter and set the value to 1 (this removes the facet
edges when the hide command is given)
2. Set the Visual style of the viewport to 2D wireframe.

3. enter the command hide

When you print the viewport to PDF (or similar), the lines should be nice vectors you
can work with in Illustrator.