autocad page setup

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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:

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Page 1: AutoCAD Page Setup

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 2: AutoCAD Page Setup

Page Setup

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

The following dialog will display:

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

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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.

Select the Adobe PDF plotter (or other printer that suits your specific goal)

Set the Paper Size to the desired format; A3 in this example

Make sure the Plot Scale is set to 1 mm = 1 unit

Choose the desired Drawing orientation

(or other printer tha to the desired format; A3 in th

1 mm = 1 unit

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 You're 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:

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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.

Type z [enter] for zoom

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 modelspace 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

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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:

Get the pre-made Color Table CBT from SOURCE and save it.

Open the location where you saved the file and unzip it.

Right-click the zwart-wit.ctb file and choose copy

in AutoCAD go to File > Plot Style Manager

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Paste the file you've copied earlier into this location

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).

Open the Page Setup for your Layout.

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.

Optionally you could check Display plot styles if you want to see the effect of the Color table in your Layout view.

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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.

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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:

2. Activate the viewport

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

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 paperspace 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.

AutoCAD Drawing insulationFrom TOI-Pedia

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Introduction There are two main methods for quickly drawing isolation in AutoCAD.

Using Polar The first and most straight forward way would be to drawing the isolation with the aid of polar.

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Because isolation is drawn at an angle of 30 degrees we need to change the polar settings. So right-click on polar -> settings:

Now change te incremental angle to 30:

If you now draw in modelspace, the polar snaps to an angle of 30 degrees:

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The polar method can be a bit time consuming for large drawings.

Using Linetype In some cases the use of a zigzag line type would be more suited:

For example: let's say that we want to draw isolation in this 'L' shape:

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First draw a line through the center of the shape

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Now select the line and go to other in the linetype dropdown box:

Now select the line and go to other in the linetype dropdown box:

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If the ZIGZAG line type isn't present in the list, press load:

In the load window, select the ZIGZAG line type and pres 'Ok'

The ZIGZAG line type is now visible in the linetype mangager, so select it and press 'OK'

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The line will now look something like this:

The line will now look something like this:

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http://wiki.bk.tudelft.nl/toi-pedia/AutoCAD_Page_setup_and_Printing_Basic

Tutorial: Create a page setup for plotting

Do you change your plot settings a lot? Do you plot drawings in various ways, for example, a draft plot and a final plot? Or do you create various layouts and need to plot them differently?You can save page setups, which contain settings for plotting. A page setup is attached to a

layout, so you can easily switch settings from one layout to another.Creating a page setup is like specifying plotting settings, so you should know how to use the Plot

dialog box first.

1. To create a new page setup, right-click the desired tab (including the Model tab), and choose Page Setup Manager. (If you don’t see the layout tabs, you have model and layout

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buttons on the status bar. Right-click either button and choose Display Layout and Model tabs.)

1. In the Page Setup Manager, click New. Enter a name. If you have existing page setups, you can choose one from the Start With list, to avoid having to create all the settings from

scratch. Click OK.

1. In the Printer/Plotter section, choose the desired printer or plotter from the drop-down list. This lets you use different devices for different layouts.

2. In the Paper Size section, choose a paper size. This allows you to use different sheet sizes for different layotus.

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3. In the Plot Area section, choose what you want to plot. Your choices depend on whether you’re on a Model or Layout tab, and can include: Layout, Display, Limits, Extents, and

Window. 4. In the Plot Offset section, you can specify an offset from the lower-left corner. You might

do this to place several plots on different parts of one sheet of paper. You can also cneter the plot by checking the Center the Plot check box.

5. In the Plot Scale section, set the scale from the drop-down list, or check the Fit to Paper check box. You can also type a scale int eh text boxes. Most layouts are plotted at 1:1 because you scale the individual viewports. You can also check the Scale Lineweights

check box to scale the lineweights along with your drawing. 6. In the Plot Style Table section, choose a plot style table if you want to use one. Plot styles

determine how plots look and let you create different looks for different plots. 7. In the Shaded Viewport Options section, you specify how a model plot (not a layout plot)

looks. You can choose from visual styles and resolution options. The Shade Plot drop-down list is not available if you’re on a Layout tab. You can also choose a quality from the

Quality drop-down list. 8. In the Plot Options section, you can choose whether or not you want to plot lineweights

and plot styles. You can also choose whether you want to plot paper space objects last. Finally, if you created 3D objects in paper space (who ever does that?), you can hide their

back lines. 9. In the Drawing Orientation section, you can plot portrait, landscape (the default), or

upside down. 10. Click the Preview button to see if you like the result.

11. Click OK to return to the Page Setup Manager. Select the new page setup, click Set Current, and click Close.

To modify a page setup, open the Page Setup Manager again, choose the page setup, and click Modify.

To use the page setup, start the PLOT command. In the Plot dialog box, choose the page setup from the Name drop-down list in the Page Setup section at the top of the dialog box. Then plot

the drawing.

Dimensioning in paper space has several advantages:

You don’t have to worry about the size of the dimension arrowheads, text, etc. Everything is full size and you plot at 1:1 scale.

You can place the dimensions outside the border of the viewport, giving you more room. You can easily dimension some parts of the model in one viewport and other parts in

another. You don’t have to create separate layers and freeze some of them. If you have a 3D model, you’ll be showing it at different angles in the viewports and you

can dimension appropriately. It’s almost impossible to properly dimension a 3D object in model space.

If you’ve been dimensioning in model space, give it a try. Here are the steps:

If you haven’t already done so, create a text style. Create a dimension style in the Dimension Style Manager.

On the Fit tab, choose the Scale Dimension to Layout option. Create a layer for your dimensions in paper space.

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The Trans-Spatial dimensioning feature (since Release 2002) automatically adjusts dimension measurements for the scale of the viewport. You can just go to your layout and dimension as you

would in model space.If you move the viewport, or pan the view, use DIMREGEN to get your dimension back to its

proper location. Occasionally, you may need to use DIMREASSOCIATE to reassociate the dimensions to their objects.

Convert a 3D solid to a 2D drawing with a hidden view

Koyilada Venkata Rao sent in this tip for converting a 3D solid to a 2D drawing. His tip explains how to create a hidden view, but you can create a wireframe as well. It uses the SOLPROF command to create a profile. By transferring the results to another file, you get a solely 2D

drawing.Here are the steps:

1. Create the 3D model. I worked with one object, but you can work with more than one. 2. Set up the view that you want.

3. Start the UCS command and use the New>View option to set the XY plane parallel to the view.

4. Choose a layout tab. By default, a viewport is created automatically. Otherwise, choose View>Viewports>New View (MVIEW command) and create a viewport.

5. Double-click inside the viewport to switch to model space. 6. Type solprof on the command line. At the prompt, select the 3D model and accept the

defaults (Y each time) for all three prompts. You should now see a wireframe profile. (The profile is one object.)

7. You’ll now see two new layers in the Layer Control drop-down list. One starts with PV- and could be PV-ad, PV-125, or any suffix. The other starts with PH- and has the same suffix.

The PV layer contains the front parts of the profile (V stands for visible). The PH layer contains the hidden parts (H stands for hidden). Make the PV- layer the current layer.

8. Freeze all other layers. Now you see the hidden view. If you want a wireframe, don’t freeze the PH- layer.

9. Press Ctrl+C and select all objects (which won’t include the frozen layers) to copy the profile to the Windows Clipboard.

10. Start a new drawing. 11. Press Ctrl+V to paste in the profile and specify any point to place it. You should see the

profile looking exactly the same as before. (If the angle looks wrong, reproduce the viewpoint you had in the previous drawing and set the UCS to View again.)

12. Start the EXPLODE command (because the profile comes in as a block) and select all objects. (Skip this step if you want to leave it as one object.)

13. The new profile may not be the same scale as the original. If not, measure any length in the original drawing.

14. Use the SCALE command and select all the objects. Then use the Reference option. At the prompt to specify the reference length, specify the beginning and end of the length you

measured, that is, the same object in the new drawing. 15. At the prompt to specify the new length, enter the length that you measured to scale the

model to that new length.

Here is the model in the new drawing. Each line (and spline) is a separate object.

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Tutorial: Convert a 3D solid to a 3-view 2D drawing in model space

You may want to draw in 3D, but if you need to deliver drawings in 2D, in several views, how do you convert them? In other tips, “Converting 3D drawings into 2D drawings,” and “Convert a 3D

solid to a 2D drawing with a hidden view,” I’ve discussed some methods, but this excellent method uses the FLATSHOT command. It was introduced in AutoCAD 2007.

The FLATSHOT command offers you much more flexibility if you want to create the drawing in model space with several views. In this tutorial, we’ll convert this solid to a 3-view drawing.

1. Make a copy of your drawing because at the end of the process you’ll delete the 3D objects.

2. Create a layer for each of the views. As you create each view, you’ll need to turn off the layers for the previous views. In this example, I made 3 layers for the 3 views–Top, Front,

and Auxiliary.

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3. Click Parallel Projection in the 3D Navigate control panel of the Dashboard; FLATSHOT works best with parallel projections.

4. Change the value of UCSORTHO to 0. You’ll be switching to orthographic views, but you don’t want to change the UCS each time you switch to a orthographic view.

5. Make the layer of your first view current, in this case, the Top layer. Display the Dashboard (the DASHBOARD command) and choose the corresponding viewpoint (Top in this example) from the drop-down list in the 3D Navigate control panel of the Dashboard.

6. Choose Flatshot in the 3D Make control panel of the Dashboard. The Flatshot dialog box opens. In this situation, in the Destination section, choose Insert as New Block, as you

see here.

7. At the bottom of the dialog box, you choose options for foreground and obscured lines. These options determine how the 2D profile will look. You can choose the colors for the profile and for obscured lines. To create a hidden view, uncheck the Show check box.

8. Click Create. The dialog box closes and you’re back in your drawing. 9. Follow the usual prompts to insert the block. The exact location at this point is not

important; you can move the blocks later. For some reason, the insertion point is somewhere off the block, so you may need to zoom out to see where to place the block.

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Don’t worry if one or more of the views looks wrong. Because FLATSHOT is laying the profiles on the XY plane, from another viewpoint the profiles can look wrong, like you see

here.

10. Turn off the layer for the previous view. (Click OK when the dialog box tells you you’re turning off the current layer.) You need to do this because FLATSHOT works on all layers

that are on or thawed. So you turn off the previous layer so that the next FLATSHOT operation doesn’t make a block of your previous 2D blocks! In our example, we turned off

the Top layer. 11. Repeat steps 5-10 for each of your views.

12. Turn on all of your layers. Switch back to Top (plan) view. Your 2D blocks should look right now.

13. Delete your original 3D object and move your 2D blocks to the desired location. Here’s the result, with top and front views and a hidden auxiliary view.

This method is very easy and effective when you need to create several 2D views of a 3D model.