PlotMaker

[Scott Davis]

Im not an ArchiCAD user, but trying to learn more about it just to be informed...

If I understand correctly, in ArchiCAD, you must use a spearate program to plot your sheets?

So as you make changes to your model and need to plot a new set, when you open Plotmaker are all the changes you've made already updated on the sheets? Are you annotating in Plotmaker on the sheets, or is your annotation done in ArchiCAD, and PM is just to set up sheets?

[Dave Jochum]

Scott wrote:
Im not an ArchiCAD user, but trying to learn more about it just to be informed...

If I understand correctly, in ArchiCAD, you must use a spearate program to plot your sheets?

So as you make changes to your model and need to plot a new set, when you open Plotmaker are all the changes you've made already updated on the sheets? Are you annotating in Plotmaker on the sheets, or is your annotation done in ArchiCAD, and PM is just to set up sheets?

Welcome to the ArchiCad community! Matthew, James, and other long time users can wax much more elegantly than I--and I'm sure they will soon--but since nobody else has responded yet, I'll answer briefly. PlotMaker is indeed a standalone program that is used to layout sheets, and so most plotting (and printing--a huge subject in itself) is done from within in it. You have complete control over AC drawing updates within PM (Drawing Usage panel in the Navigator). You are supposed to be able to tell what drawings have changed in AC since last import to PM, however the unfortunate situation currently is that all drawings in an AC file that has undergone a Save, show as modified. Hopefully that will be corrected soon. The breakdown of what work should be done in AC vs. PM is another huge issue that you can read about extensively here in the forum.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Scott wrote:
If I understand correctly, in ArchiCAD, you must use a spearate program to plot your sheets?

So as you make changes to your model and need to plot a new set, when you open Plotmaker are all the changes you've made already updated on the sheets? Are you annotating in Plotmaker on the sheets, or is your annotation done in ArchiCAD, and PM is just to set up sheets?

Yup, separate program. This has had advantages historically in that the protection key (dongle) isn't required to run PlotMaker, so someone else in the office could fire it up and print/plot off any desired sheets as well as fine-tune the layouts. In prior versions, drawings were saved to disk in a special format (PMK) that could be read by PlotMaker (layers, pens, etc. were visible and changeable). One had to remember to 'publish' the changed drawings for the updates to show up in the layouts. In the current version, drawings can be linked directly to any number of model files, DWG files, images and for Windows, OLE documents (Word/Excel).

With the linked setup, life is much simpler - and someone without a protection key can still plot, but only the last-saved information in the layout book. To perform an update, ArchiCAD is run seamlessly in the background to extract the drawing information ... and that requires the key. The update could be done automatically, but for performance issues, the default is to have the updates done manually - you are notified upon opening the layout book that drawings have (potentially) changed. If you're only interested in plotting one sheet, you can just update the drawing(s) on that sheet to avoid waiting for all of the other drawings to update....although the update process is multithreaded and performed in the background while you do other work in the layouts. The update is quite fast except for things like when sun shadows are turned on for "live" elevations having complex geometry.

Think of PlotMaker a little bit like PowerPoint: just as PP has 'slide masters' with styles, we have layout masters that can affect the appearance (title block, borders/etc) of any or all layouts. Various sized masters/layouts can be in a single book.

You'll read about lots of different ways that people swear by for the workflow with PlotMaker...where the title block should be done (AC or PM), where the annotation should be, titles, etc. Personally, I have my title block in my master layout, all annotation is done inside AC, the date/page number/NCS sheet number etc are 'autotext' placed by PM into the title block, and the only text/etc that I ever do in PM is if I need to change something like the default scale value shown in my title block.

IMHO, PM being a separate program is a non-issue ... what many of us complain (bitterly at times) about is that the tool set and preferences in PlotMaker are not the same and do not behave the same way as ArchiCAD itself. Such inconsistency is extremely counterproductive and annoying. This complaint has been loud for years and seems to fall on deaf ears.

HTH,
Karl