Is plotmaker worth all of this trouble?

[Anonymous]

www.imageshack.com

[Anonymous]

Click "Scale all at" radio button at top where it says 100%. You obviously have selected a master different to your desired printer page size. The button you have selected is basically saying "fit to page".

HTH

[gerd]

hi,

perhaps you have diffent sized pages in the layoutbook.
if you have changed the third option (like shown in your picture), plotmaker takes the dimensions of the biggest plan, shrinks it to the paper size and apply the scaling factor to all pages (even to the small ones). so all pages are in the same scale, but in your case not 100% or another useable factor like 50%.

if you want to get 100% take the first radio button and make sure to use a big enough paper and plot only pages based upon the same master layout.

best regards

[Anonymous]

Is plotmaker worth all of this trouble?

My answer would be NO!

Now that you can make reasonable prints from Archicad 9, it occurred to me that, for 2D work anyway, it would be easier to dump a scaled-up title box on to a plan, and send to print. Kind of like Autocad before they had paper space!

Next logical step would be to plot the same way. However, when you plot from Archicad you can't select the plot area - so it's not really practical, unfortunately.

I spent half an hour yesterday nudging views around a plotmaker layout - there must be an easier way!

[Anonymous]

Keith wrote:
I spent half an hour yesterday nudging views around a plotmaker layout - there must be an easier way!

I hear you.


There has to be some book or something out there.

[Anonymous]

Keith wrote:
Is plotmaker worth all of this trouble?

My answer would be NO!

Now that you can make reasonable prints from Archicad 9, it occurred to me that, for 2D work anyway, it would be easier to dump a scaled-up title box on to a plan, and send to print. Kind of like Autocad before they had paper space!

Next logical step would be to plot the same way. However, when you plot from Archicad you can't select the plot area - so it's not really practical, unfortunately.

I spent half an hour yesterday nudging views around a plotmaker layout - there must be an easier way!

No way would I go to using titleblocks in Archicad. Your missing out on linked referenced details, auto sheet numbering, different pen mapping for different drawings...
Plotmaker is definitely worth it!

[TomWaltz]

Cole_Construction wrote:

Keith wrote:
I spent half an hour yesterday nudging views around a plotmaker layout - there must be an easier way!

I hear you.


There has to be some book or something out there.

"Archicad Project Framework" by CADImage, available from Objects Online. It's a bit outdated (for 8.1), but very useful for setting up title blocks, templates, and workflow ideas.

[Anonymous]

Tom, thanks because It is the mail already. I ordered it on Tuesday.

I heard good things about it.

[Steve Jepson]

If you are working on a small project. Say a house plan of 6 or 8 sheets, No.
PlotMaker is probably not worth the trouble. All you are doing is placing the information you already made in ArchiCAD into another program and printing it from there. Why? You can publish you view sets. You want several drawings and details at different scales on the same sheet. No problem, thats what resize, x-refs, and modules are for. Just for the AutoText? You can make universal changes to words and phrases in ArchiCAD. Title Blocks? Just copy and paste, make a .gsm, or use a template. Some times it is very convenient to construct everything on the same story so you can take advantage of using witness lines from the floor plan or other things.

Use a different story for each sheet.
Edit-Copy-Paste, some layer combo's, and you will not need PlotMaker at all.

PlotMaker has some clever options but they also add a level of complication that is not necessary for very small projects.
Personally, I like using PlotMaker. The biggest gripe I have with it is the time it takes to regenerate and update.

PlotMaker is a lot of fun to use and that is worth something too.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Wow. Interesting thread ... haven't heard printing from ArchiCAD advocated since the old escribe version of ac-talk ... anybody remember Mathilde K.? (PlotMaker was more combersome in those days.)

Certainly, Publisher in AC combined with special 'print' views that display title blocks/etc can get the job done ... but with all page numbering, section and detail number/sheet page references, and more all coordinated manually. IMHO it would take much more time to even edit those numbers than to just set up the PM sheet, if you have a company template already (which everyone does, right?!).

For your 6 to 8 sheet drawing set, Steve, I'll have my PM book completely set up, auto-numbered, auto-texted and linked in less than 5 minutes. Any future changes are fully automatic. If I need ot move a detail or section to a new page in the future ... still all automatic. I cannot imagine working any other way.

Creating hotlinks and xrefs in order to get multiple drawings per page when printing from ArchiCAD is way more complicated and time consuming. And copy/paste? Yikes. I didn't hear that.

But, I hear Cole too: we have always complained about the AC documentation not explaining how to USE the software, but only what each command does. This has left the USE to extra cost training, books, or here.

Cheers,
Karl