Printing

[dhavalpatel_us337373]

Hello Everyone,


I am looking for a single and batch print utility or a lisp routine, which will allow me to print drawings within the folder (drag and drop). The publish doesn’t always work with large number of drawings. The goal is to print drawings most efficiently without much input by the end user. The drawings will be printed to the different printers or plotter with different paper sizes. Can anyone please help? Thank you

[rkmcswain]

Hello Everyone,


I am looking for a single and batch print utility or a lisp routine, which will allow me to print drawings within the folder (drag and drop). The publish doesn’t always work with large number of drawings.

What doesn't work with PUBLISH? We use it every day without problems.

[alanjt]

What about Sheet Set Manager?

[dhavalpatel_us337373]

What doesn't work with PUBLISH? We use it every day without problems.

Publish doesn't work at all when we try to submit large number of jobs. Also not every engineer knows how to use publish and it also requires upfront setup process. Is there anything available for printing besides publish? Is there any type of a lisp routing available for printing and batch pdfs into a single file or separate individual file.

Thank you for your help.

[rkmcswain]

Publish doesn't work at all when we try to submit large number of jobs.

But why? What isn't working about it?

Also not every engineer knows how to use publish and it also requires upfront setup process.

The only upfront setup it requires is that the page setup you want to use be set current in the drawings, and even that isn't *required*. You can apply a page setup to all of the drawings inside the publish command.

Is there anything available for printing besides publish? Is there any type of a lisp routing available for printing and batch pdfs into a single file or separate individual file.

Not that I know of. Publish made any older ones obsolete. You can always script the -PLOT command.

[dhavalpatel_us337373]

But why? What isn't working about it?

The only upfront setup it requires is that the page setup you want to use be set current in the drawings, and even that isn't *required*. You can apply a page setup to all of the drawings inside the publish command.

Not that I know of. Publish made any older ones obsolete. You can always script the -PLOT command.

Can you please help me to modify the attached files? I had found them online but currently it’s not working. Thank you

[irneb]

You don't state the version of AC. Some of that requires VBA, and the newer AC's don't come with that - there is a download though from ADesk's site.

What none of us can understand is what you have against Publish. Even with a routine you're going to need some pre-calculated-setup(s), and the DWG's have to be set correctly. These things are already available as more user friendly graphical dialogs if you use publish. With the routine it's going to be only those with the skills to modify the routine who can setup the plots.

All routines (including lisp, VBA, DotNet, Scripting, etc. as well as Publish, will fail if there's something so wrong with the DWG that there's an error). Therefore all your drawings must be kept as clean and error free as possible ... no matter which way you're going.

A few points to note about Publish though. Those marked with a (#) is also going to affect other types of plot routines:

• Make sure your layers are reconciled or reconciling turned off, or change the setting so there's no pop-up on plotting. (#)
• Preferably turn background publish off, otherwise you won't see errors happening and you'll simply "find" nothing coming out on the printer.
• Have one (or more) "template" (or rather example) DWG's with pre-set page setups for the different printer / page size / pen settings / etc. combinations you may use during the course of your work. This allows you to simply import those settings into the Publish dialog whenever you use it.
• Ensure everyone draws their layout tabs correctly. It becomes a major headache if some use plot by window and have the TB set at a different location from the PS 0,0. The only quick-fix to this is to use Plot Extents in the page setup - but then you cant center the plot on the page if someone's got some temporary stuff outside the plot area. (#)
• If you have a print accounting system you may have a dialog popping up for each page printed. Try finding a way to get around this as AC will never be able to send several tabs from several DWG's as one single print job. (#)
• Naming of plotted files (DWF/PDF) is not perfect. Try using a batch renaming utility - do a google for these.
• If you need to plot to a PLT/PRN file (hard-coded file to be copied directly to a particular printer) you could install RedMon (google for it) and set it up to print to a file automatically - it basically creates a configurable port redirection in the windows printers. (#)

[RobertB]

• If you need to plot to a PLT/PRN file (hard-coded file to be copied directly to a particular printer) you could ...

Another approach is to create a PC3 file for your plot device that writes to a file rather than directly to the port. No port redirector is need then.

[rkmcswain]

Another approach is to create a PC3 file for your plot device that writes to a file

That is how our main PC3 file has been set up for years. Never knew there was a market for a 3rd party tool to do this....?

[dhavalpatel_us337373]

You don't state the version of AC. Some of that requires VBA, and the newer AC's don't come with that - there is a download though from ADesk's site.

What none of us can understand is what you have against Publish. Even with a routine you're going to need some pre-calculated-setup(s), and the DWG's have to be set correctly. These things are already available as more user friendly graphical dialogs if you use publish. With the routine it's going to be only those with the skills to modify the routine who can setup the plots.

All routines (including lisp, VBA, DotNet, Scripting, etc. as well as Publish, will fail if there's something so wrong with the DWG that there's an error). Therefore all your drawings must be kept as clean and error free as possible ... no matter which way you're going.

A few points to note about Publish though. Those marked with a (#) is also going to affect other types of plot routines:

• Make sure your layers are reconciled or reconciling turned off, or change the setting so there's no pop-up on plotting. (#)
• Preferably turn background publish off, otherwise you won't see errors happening and you'll simply "find" nothing coming out on the printer.
• Have one (or more) "template" (or rather example) DWG's with pre-set page setups for the different printer / page size / pen settings / etc. combinations you may use during the course of your work. This allows you to simply import those settings into the Publish dialog whenever you use it.
• Ensure everyone draws their layout tabs correctly. It becomes a major headache if some use plot by window and have the TB set at a different location from the PS 0,0. The only quick-fix to this is to use Plot Extents in the page setup - but then you cant center the plot on the page if someone's got some temporary stuff outside the plot area. (#)
• If you have a print accounting system you may have a dialog popping up for each page printed. Try finding a way to get around this as AC will never be able to send several tabs from several DWG's as one single print job. (#)
• Naming of plotted files (DWF/PDF) is not perfect. Try using a batch renaming utility - do a google for these.
• If you need to plot to a PLT/PRN file (hard-coded file to be copied directly to a particular printer) you could install RedMon (google for it) and set it up to print to a file automatically - it basically creates a configurable port redirection in the windows printers. (#)

We are using AutoCAD 2009.

I appreciate your time and thoughts on above subject and I agree with you on most of the points you have made, however, we are having trouble each time when we try to send a big projects to the plotter using Publish. First will never print anything and it’s always hit and miss and never consistent. Sometimes it will randomly miss dwgs and will not print. On the other hand it shows on the computer that the dwgs are being printed but nothing will come out from the printer. Also it doesn’t show any errors either. Second we also want to do batch PDFs for large number of dwgs so the individuals don’t have to create pdfs manually one file at a time.

I am open to any other solutions or atomization, however, I had found those files I had posted and thought it would be easy to modify those files then rather then creating something from new scratch. I will appreciate all your help. Thank you