topic Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT? in Collaboration with other software

Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

TomWaltz — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:29:50 GMT

We have received ~400 DWG files we need to print. Does anyone have any neat ways to do that other than

"For poor_sap = 1 to 400, Open and Plot"??

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Aaron Bourgoin — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 19:52:30 GMT

do a google on Multi Batch. This should allow you to set it up and go. There is a restruced used free version and a cheap full version.

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

TomWaltz — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:22:32 GMT

I guess I was just hoping that AutoCAD would allow you to print more than one drawing/sheet at a time.

What was I thinking??

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Richard Morrison — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:44:45 GMT

I think you may need something like http://www.m-c-2.com/main.htm

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Eduardo Rolon — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 03:53:11 GMT

I think there is a batch plot utility in AutoCAD 2004 full version, I remember seeing it somowhere in the extras... but I might be wrong

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

TomWaltz — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 11:02:45 GMT

There is an Autodesk batch plot utility, but to say that it s#ucks is being polite.

Aaron was right. We got Multi-batch, a pretty nice Autocad scripting program for about $40.

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Aaron Bourgoin — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:05:44 GMT

Multi-Batch can also be used to perform ac to AutoCAD conversion tasks that aren't done in the ArchiCAD converter scripts.

This was its original use in the office.

AutoCAD output methods, in general, seem very clunky. Seems like you have to do an awful lot of stuff befor you can press print...

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Djordje — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 17:58:36 GMT

TomWaltz wrote:
We have received ~400 DWG files we need to print. Does anyone have any neat ways to do that other than
"For poor_sap = 1 to 400, Open and Plot"??

Yep.

Pull them into PlotMaker. Print. Done.

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Eduardo Rolon — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 18:49:03 GMT

Djordje wrote:
Yep.

Pull them into PlotMaker. Print. Done.

As long as you don't mind not having lineweights on the PM file, and if you have a fast computer since all those AutoCAD lines do eat a lot of resources, Djorde's solution works. Just remember to save each inserted dwg as a pmk file so that PM does not take too long to open.

If you need the lineweights you will have to get the pen settings info from the guys that gave you the dwg files so that you can override the pen settings in PM and hope that all the files followed the guidelines. Also you can ask for "plt" files and those will have the lineweights.

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

TomWaltz — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 20:47:05 GMT

Yep.

Pull them into PlotMaker. Print. Done.

Great idea, except that some are in model space (all at different scales, of course), some are in Paperspace, and some files have multiple layouts in them.

Did I mention these need to be to scale and usable as documents (at least resembling a real line weight)? So scale to fit is not an option, nor is globally-assigning pen weights.

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Eduardo Rolon — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:41:06 GMT

The other option if you want to use AC you can try is to import one by one all dwgs into AC verify settings, link to PM and then plot. Since no file is the same I don't think there is an easy way to do this.

The last option I can recommend is to try to use Adobe Acrobat since it gives you an option to select the files and right click on them and batch import them into a pdf file. I did use this for a couple of hundred pages of individual word files and though it took a while it work. Theoretically it works with AutoCAD files since Acrobat install an icon and several menu options into AutoCAD and it might be able to pull the files with line weights.

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:15:00 GMT

ejrolon wrote:
The last option I can recommend is to try to use Adobe Acrobat since it gives you an option to select the files and right click on them and batch import them into a pdf file

I’ve never heard of this option in Acrobat, I have the full version of Acrobat V5.0, can’t seem to be able to do it on mine, any idea what I need to get it activated? It could come in pretty handy..

Re: Batch plotting AutoCAD LT?

Eduardo Rolon — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 18:04:28 GMT

I am using Acrobat 6 Pro. It has an option to create PDF from multiple files. I just tried it will work as long as all the drawing info is in model space and if you have set the dwg with visible line weights. This means that you will probably have to open each individual dwg file to verify its settings, defeating the option to do a batch convert. On the other hand Acrobat installs a menu in AutoCAD to convert the file to pdf and these files then can be combined together to create a pdf book.