AutoCAD® 2009 & AutoCAD LT® 2009 All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies®

Chapter 1. Page Setup

This minibook walks you through the process of efficiently generating a hard copy of your drawing. After all, the design process should be the difficult part and getting your drawing on paper or as a file for sharing should be straightforward. I wish I could say creating a hard copy of your drawing is as easy as 1-2-3 — but it does take a little more effort than that.

Printing in AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT is referred to as plotting or publishing. If you're wondering why the term printing isn't used, it's because plotting deals with larger sheets of paper and specialized devices called plotters. Printing, on the other hand, deals with smaller paper sizes for things such as office documents. Plotting is done one drawing and one layout at a time, so if you have multiple drawings and layouts to plot, you'll likely find yourself using the Publish feature.

Before you plot or publish your drawings, you need to do some setup work. The type and amount of setup that you need to do before you can generate a hard copy of your drawing is determined by whether you are plotting a drawing from the Model tab or a paper space layout. Plotting from the Model tab is the easiest way, but it doesn't allow as much flexibility as plotting from a paper space layout.

Layouts allow you to take advantage of floating viewports to specify different views of your drawing at different scales while keeping the geometry at full scale. When you plot a drawing from the Model tab and want to plot objects ...