Publishing to DWG in Plotmaker

[TDabney]

Hi -

This may be more of a wish. . . I would like to publish layouts in PM to DWG. I would like those DWGs to look like the pages I've arranged in PM. For example, in a layout I have some elevations. In ArchiCAD, the way I do my elevations is to eventually unlink them and drag a grouped copy down 100' or so to edit. I leave the original elevation generated from the model so any updates can be transfered easily to the (now) cleaned up line drawing below. In PM, I just have the cleaned up elevation showing - by adjusting the "view frame". When I publish the layout to a DWG, the entire - unadjusted view frame - section view is published. It also seems to get moved around from how I layed it out on the PM page. I know there are other ways to get around this but. . . PM is our "layout" solution. When I send my drawings to consultants, I want them to look as they would if I sent them a hard copy. It seems like PM should be able to produce this. - Am I doing something incorrectly or missing something?

PS: the same goes for the master layouts.

Tom

[David Larrew]

gobel wrote:
when i want to publish to dwg it doesn't work, cause the only option that i can publish with is postscript or any other image extension... can someone help and tell me where did i go wrong?
Gobel

Be sure that your PM install has all of the required translation .DLLs and other required AC shared files.

Which AC and PM versions are you running?

[Anonymous]

I have the same problem. The archicad guide Vol 2 states you can save layouts in PM as DWG but I can find no option to do this when I select "saveas" other than the native layout format. What am I doing wrong? I am running AC version 8.1 and PM 3.1.

[Djordje]

michael wrote:
I have the same problem. The archicad guide Vol 2 states you can save layouts in PM as DWG but I can find no option to do this when I select "saveas" other than the native layout format. What am I doing wrong? I am running AC version 8.1 and PM 3.1.

File/Publisher/Publish

Drag the layout book to the right window. Name the set, choose the folder you are saving to. Set the file format to DWG (by default it is DWF). Set the translation properties in the Translator.

That's it.

HTH,

[Anonymous]

gobel wrote:
I have a problem in exchanging from PM to DWG.
my files are imported to PM as pmk not direct from AC file..
when i want to publish to dwg it doesn't work, cause the only option that i can publish with is postscript or any other image extension... can someone help and tell me where did i go wrong?
Gobel

See this topic discussed in the "Construction Documentation" section under "Plotmaker" I raised the same question and got the answers there. basically you need to go to the publisher Dialoge box and dig a little deeper into the options buttons. You will see a screen shot of the Dialoge box in the section mentioned above.

[Anonymous]

I've posted the results of a small experiment/study under the topic:

ArchiCAD-Talk Forum Index >>> Data Exchange and Information Sharing >>> Converting Fonts to Autocad

[Anonymous]

Referring to my problem with line thicknesses earlier in this discussion:

I have now found that when publishing from PlotMaker to DWG, as well as setting your pen to colour conversion table in ArchiCAD (and making sure this is the method used) the display options of PlotMaker should be set to 'hairline'.

Failure to make this change will result in the AutoCAD DWG being made up of POLYLINES of different thicknesses (rather than simple lines with widths informed by their colour), thereby defeating the object of setting up translation tables and colour/linewidth definitions.

I could see no reference to this in the ArchiCAD manual, and the discovery is a complete fluke.

I hope this is of use to someone.

Regards,

Kevin

[Anonymous]

Djordje wrote:

michael wrote:
I have the same problem. The archicad guide Vol 2 states you can save layouts in PM as DWG but I can find no option to do this when I select "saveas" other than the native layout format. What am I doing wrong? I am running AC version 8.1 and PM 3.1.

File/Publisher/Publish

Drag the layout book to the right window. Name the set, choose the folder you are saving to. Set the file format to DWG (by default it is DWF). Set the translation properties in the Translator.

That's it.

HTH,

Djordje, I have tried your same instructions using AC9, but when I open the newly written .dwg file, it opens empty! However, it's listed attributes, by the file size show it to be normal. I have tried using the default translator and also a translator that uses xrefs. Neither yeilds a file that I can successfully open with anything 'seen'. Any ideas?

[Aussie John]

TDabney wrote:
Hi -

When I publish the layout to a DWG, the entire - unadjusted view frame - section view is published. Tom

There is an option in the translator to crop the layout to only that seen.

[Anonymous]

Patrick wrote:

Djordje, I have tried your same instructions using AC9, but when I open the newly written .dwg file, it opens empty! However, it's listed attributes, by the file size show it to be normal. I have tried using the default translator and also a translator that uses xrefs. Neither yeilds a file that I can successfully open with anything 'seen'. Any ideas?

I was experiencing the same thing yesterday, but when I took the file to our only PC with AC2000 the file opened fine. Not sure what the issue is when reimporting DWG's that had just been published with plotmaker.

[__archiben]

Patrick wrote:
Djordje, I have tried your same instructions using AC9, but when I open the newly written .dwg file, it opens empty!

it's not empty!

http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=29064#29064

~/archiben