Learn how to convert your AutoCAD design into a PDF while ensuring all reference files are included in a compressed folder. Gain an understanding of the e-transmit feature in AutoCAD, which helps safeguard against data loss during file transfers. Follow the detailed instructions for generating a PDF, choosing the correct settings, and preparing your project for final delivery.
Key Takeaways:
- AutoCAD's e-transmit feature creates a compressed folder with all associated reference files, ensuring that no information is lost when sending your project to others, avoiding issues like missing elements in the drawing.
- To generate a PDF, access the File menu, select Plot (previously known as Print), and configure settings accordingly. Choose the DWG to PDF option, a built-in print driver in AutoCAD, set your preferred paper size, and adjust the plot area as needed. Make sure the plot scale matches the scale of your drawing.
- Save the CAD101 A201 sheet file as a PDF in the CAD101 file downloads folder. When selecting the plot style table, use the VDCI color table to ensure the drawing prints in black and white with a lighter gray for fills.
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Now that we have finished our floor plan and added all of the appropriate annotations, we can see how this project looks in our A201 sheet file. In this video, we are going to e-transmit, which creates a zipped package of all reference data, and create a printed PDF.
This printed PDF will be the final submission for this CAD101 Introduction to AutoCAD course. Now let's open up our CAD101 A201 sheet file, and let's see how the xref has been updated. I'll click Open.
I'll find cad101a201.dwg. I'll click Open. We can compare this. I'm going to close because we can see that our floor plan has been appropriately updated.
And now we can start by creating our e-transmit. If I go to the File drop-down, you will see that there is an e-transmit option. If I choose e-transmit, we can see that our current drawing is the selected file, and that there are a few things included in this current drawing that will be bound together and created as a zipped folder.
These files could then be emailed or uploaded or sent to a colleague, and they can open the drawing and see all references and the original drawing, and that way there's nothing lost in a data transfer. If you sent the A201 file by itself to a colleague, they would not know where the external references are saved, and the drawing would actually be mainly blank. An e-transmit protects all your drawings and consolidates them into one package so that you could send it to a colleague or an external source.
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These are the exact files we need, so I can hit OK, and I'll replace the word standard with my initials, and please replace it with your initials. I'll click Save. The e-transmit is not the final submission for this course.
A PDF submission is instead. To create a PDF, we need to print it, or in this case, plot it. I can go File, Plot, which is an old-school word for print, but historically plotters have been used because they printed large-scale architectural drawings.
So I'll go Plot. Here we can see the plot window open. Now, you'll notice a lot of my settings say none.
Your settings might say something different, but we'll start by assigning these one by one. For print or plotter, we want to create a PDF, so we can go to DWG to PDF. This is an internal print driver that comes with AutoCAD, and it creates PDFs from our DWGs.
It's important that you choose this option, or else you might not see the paper size we are about to use. Speaking of paper size, if I hit the drop-down after choosing DWG to PDF, you will see that there are a lot of options. These options may vary depending on the real-world printer you're printing to, but because this is a PDF, we could simply choose an 8.5 × 11 that includes full bleed.
That means that any piece of geometry on our drawing will be printed to the PDF. So I will choose ANSI full bleed A 8.5 × 11. You'll notice that creates a vertical preview here, but under drawing orientation, we can simply choose landscape.
When we see plot area, it says what to plot. There are four options: display, extents, limits, and window. In this case, display and extents are fairly similar, but I always want to choose a window in this situation.
The window will allow me to choose exactly the geometry that I would like to print. I'll zoom out once, and I'll choose the bottom endpoint here to the top endpoint here. These small tick marks are included in the title block file for this purpose.
You'll see that plot offset has an offset of zero and zero, and you would need to know your paper size to determine the offset, but in this case, we can simply center the plot. One of the final options we need to look at is plot scale. This plot scale says fit to paper, and that is not what I would like.
We can see that we've chosen a quarter inch equals a foot scale for the scale of this drawing, so I need to uncheck this and choose quarter inch equals a foot. This is because we are plotting from model space and not paper space. Remember, we will print from paper space in future lessons.
If I hit preview at this time with no plot style table assigned, you will notice that our drawing is in color to match our layers. I'll press Escape to go back. The plot style table, or the color table file, or pen assignments as they're called here in parentheses, reference how AutoCAD understands pens and colors as line weights and transparency, or in AutoCAD's terms, screening.
If I choose the drop-down below, we can see that there are many color table files that are automatically included with AutoCAD, and one that comes with our course. That is the VDCI color table file, but in some cases, it might be missing for you. In this case, I want to show you a trick to add a color table file directly into the Autodesk folder, where it will always be found by your drawings.
In this case, I'm going to type in styles manager, and you'll see the suggestion. As soon as I press ENTER, you'll see that a file explorer window has opened somewhere on your computer. It should ideally open right in front of AutoCAD so you can see it.
This is where the color table files and the style table files are found for all AutoCAD settings for your version of AutoCAD. If you've used a different version in the past, you may not see your user-created color table files in this folder. Now, I'm going to open a new File Explorer window and move it to the side.
Go to our local disk C and file downloads, and remember, here is our VDCI color table file. I can drag it here, holding Control to copy, and now it’s in both this location and that location. So, no matter what, I should see this color table file when I make new drawings.
I can close both of these windows, and now let's go back to file plot, make sure we choose our VDCI color table file, and it will ask me if I want to assign this plot style to all layouts. This includes our 8.5 × 11 layout and our 11 × 17 layout, so I'll choose yes for now, and now when I hit preview, we will see that this prints in black and white and a lighter gray color for that fill. I will press Escape to go back to my plot window, and then I'll choose okay to create my PDF.
From here, please browse back to your CAD101 file downloads folder, and here is where we want to save our PDF. In this case, I'll replace the word model, which was our drawing space, that's where it got that, with my initials. Please replace this with your initials, so it should read CAD101-A201-[YourInitials].
I'll click Save As it plots, I will receive a notification, and this notification says 'No errors or warnings found,' confirming that my PDF printed correctly. Additionally, if you have a PDF reader on your computer, it might automatically open the PDF.
You will see that our PDF also includes AutoCAD layers, which you might be able to view in your PDF reader, and this is the file that you should upload for your final assignment in Introduction to AutoCAD. I hope that you've enjoyed this course, and I hope to see you continue the CAD series at VDCI, Virtual Design and Construction Institute.
