Plotting DWG Files

[Srinivas]

Dear All,

A friend of my mine works in a Plotting shop where they have AutoCAD and they do there plotting to all the Architects in the city with this software. But due to some forced upgrade threats from Autodesk they are willing to change from Autocad To ArchiCAD and he sought my help in this regard.

The problem is any Architect can come with his own predefined lineweights. For example a simple drawing with a Rectangle and a circle in the same color but in different lineweights as it is possible to put them in different layers and assign different lineweights. But when this drawing is imported in AC it would take them as a same lineweight. This is a simple example. If it's a huge drawing then I belive it would be a problem for him to take a plot.

Can we import dwg's with a same color and different lineweights? Any better way to implement ArchiCAD in this kind of situation.

Sorry if it's a lengthy post.


thanks in advance,
Srinivas.

[Anonymous]

This is a new one to me; ArchiCAD/PlotMaker for driving plotters at a service bureau. This in not something that either AutoCAD or ArchiCAD is especially suited to but I suppose they are both still cheaper than the dedicated plotting software that is usually sold to service bureaus.

The easiest thing would be to ask the Architects to provide HPGL (PLT) files and use PlotFlow.

It would also be possible to set up DWG translators to convert the client's pens to ones of the correct weight in PlotMaker.

Another possibility (and perhaps the easiest) is to set up pen tables (or defaults) for each client so that their drawings can be imported simply into the correct template file.

In version 9 they would use PlotMaker for all of this, but in 10 they would need ArchiCAD since PlotMaker has been incorporated into it.

It is important to remember that color and lineweight are not associated in the same way in ArchiCAD as they are in AutoCAD. It is best to think in terms of the pen numbers and match them up that way.

This sounds interesting. Let us know what happens. And if they need any hands on help, I would love the chance to visit India

[Haneef Tayob]

This is related to one of the items I have also been trying to sort out which stands in the way of plotting autocad drawings accurately as intended - Plot Styles

AutoCAD has something called Plot Styles, which control pen thicknesses for each colour. This is usually different for each office. I'm also not sure how AutoCad users use it today (AutoCad 14 was really the last version I used)

It would be nice if Plotmakers publisher could import (& export) these Plotstyles files. If it could, then one could plot Autocad files accurately and easily.

regards
Haneef

[Eduardo Rolon]

The easiest trick to do is to get your client to create a plotfile of the dwg and this is what you import into PM, since plts include all the lineweights you don't have to worry about plot styles or specific settings from the client. The only thing you have to watch out for are circles and curves and verify that the plt file setting the client used didn't convert them into lines. It is easier than setting custom translators and inporting dwgs. This is what I use about 75% of the time with consultant files.