Tutorial: plotting to PDF

In this tutorial you plot the plan from the previous tutorials to a PDF file, at 1:50 on an A4 sheet, in black and white with the monochrome.ctb plot style table. Then you see how layouts, with their viewports, are plotted.

Open plano.dwg and check that the Model tab, below the drawing area, is active.

1. The Plot dialog

Enter PLOT (or PRINT) or press Ctrl+P. The Plot dialog opens. LinceCAD plots to vector PDF: lines, text (with its fonts) and hatches come out as on screen, at any magnification.

Printer/plotter: leave DWG To PDF.pc3 (lince PDF). It is the same name AutoCAD uses, so the settings saved in the drawing work for it too.
Paper size: choose ISO full bleed A4 (297.00 x 210.00 mm).
Drawing orientation: select Landscape.

2. What to plot: a window

In What to plot: choose Window and click Window <. The dialog hides and the command line asks for the corners.

Specify first corner:

Type -1800,-2400 (bottom left, outside the dimensions and the title).

Specify opposite corner:

Type 9200,7200. The Plot dialog comes back.

The other options are Extents (everything drawn), Display (what is on screen) and Limits.

3. The scale

In Plot scale: clear Fit to paper.
Choose 1:50 from the list. Below it you can read the equivalence: 1 mm of paper = 50 drawing units. As the drawing is in millimetres, 1 m of the plan measures 2 cm on paper.
Tick Center the plot: the window is placed in the middle of the sheet.

The window measures 11 × 9.6 m: at 1:50 it takes 220 × 192 mm and fits on the landscape A4.

4. The plot style table

The plot style table (CTB) decides the colour, lineweight and screening each drawing colour is plotted with.

In Plot style table (pen assignments): choose monochrome.ctb: everything comes out black, whatever its colour on screen. With grayscale.ctb colours become greys.
In Plot options: leave Plot object lineweights ticked (walls, at 0.50 mm, come out thicker) and Plot with plot styles (without this box the table is not applied).

Your own tables (.ctb files, or .stb if the drawing uses named plot styles) are copied to the %APPDATA%\lince\estilos_trazado folder or to the drawing folder, and appear in the same list.

5. Preview and PDF

Click Preview… to see the sheet as it will come out. Close the preview to return to the dialog.
If you want the drawing to remember these settings for next time, tick Apply to Layout.
Click OK, choose the folder and type the name plano.pdf. The command line confirms the file and its size.

The same dialog saves PNG or SVG instead of PDF: just type the name with that extension. The PNG resolution is chosen in PNG:.

6. Layouts and viewports

Besides Model, a drawing can have layouts (paper space): each tab is a sheet with its title block and one or more viewports that show the model at a scale. Drawings coming from AutoCAD usually have them ready.

Click the layout tab. You see the sheet, its printable area and the viewports.
Double-click inside a viewport to enter the model through it (the status bar button changes from PAPER to MODEL); double-clicking outside it, or PSPACE, goes back to paper.
With a viewport active, the sun-with-viewport icon of the layer control freezes a layer in that viewport only; in the Layer Properties Manager it is the VP Freeze column. That way each viewport shows its own content.
Whatever you draw with the layout active and outside the viewports goes on paper: a title block, a legend.
To plot it, enter PLOT on that tab. What to plot: proposes Layout and a 1:1 scale: the sheet comes out at its size and each viewport keeps its own scale.

New layouts and viewports are created with LAYOUT and MVIEW; the viewport scale is set in the status bar. For a plan drawn from scratch you can also plot from Model as in steps 1 to 5.

Notes

PAGESETUP saves named page setups to reuse them or import them from another drawing.
PREVIEW opens the preview directly, with the current settings.
To print on paper, choose the printer in Printer/plotter:.