PLOT TO PDF DISPLAY ONLY SOME LAYER NAMES

[lesleys]

Hi All
I am working on a project where the project Manager has asked that the pdf displays the layer names so he can turn some on or off. All good so far.

He has now asked that I put everything in the building layout on one layer which I really do not want to do as for one thing I don't think its good practice & as we will be getting updated layouts over the life of the project means repeating the exercise every time. There are several blocks each of which will have several levels.

I have tried the following
Make a block of the building layout - all layers still show in the listing in the pdf.
Inserting that block as an xref - same result

Without using something clever like lisp (sorry don't use it :() is there a way I can plot to pdf with all the layers plotting but with only selected ones being listed in the pdf layer listing panel.
He wants to see approx 10 layers listed instead of the 30 plus that are actually used in the drawing to create the whole picture which need to be plotted.

Thanks for any help.

[tedg]

Hey good morning!
If I had to do this, I would save a copy of the file(s) in a particular directory for the PM, maybe bind xrefs (insert option) if that's applicable.

Then use "layer translator" using a preset drawing file to map your layers to the 10+/- common layers that make sense.
You can SAVE and LOAD these settings again and again with a named .dws file, so once you've mapped the most layers you're going to deal with (the worst case scenario) you'll have them all pre-mapped ready to go.

Then simply purge, save, and create your PDFs with the 10+/- layers for the PM.

So this means every time you have a new or updated drawing, you save it to that directory, run the layer translator (loading the pre-setup dws).
I would do all of this in a separate folder for the PM; your copied dwg files, PDFs, your master mapping dwg file and dws.

That's what I would do...;)

[lesleys]

Hi Ted
Thank you I will look into that as there are over 100 drawings all a bit of a bind! It's because he only wants to look at certain layers etc. Oh deep joy just now got an urgent can I do something else instead ;)
Again thanks for your help