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How to get DWF printouts

Post a Comment May-28-2008 | Posted by Orhan Toker | Printable Version | Level |

AutoCAD 2000 and later

Do you always plot your drawings directly on paper? If your answer is ‘Yes’, please read this article.

Figure.1 DWF6 ePlot : Electronic Plotter Tool

I am going to discuss paper and electronic plot in today’s article. Actually you might have already been sent your drawings in digital format (by zipping AutoCAD files). Yet this is not a effective method if you do not accept your drawings being copied or edited by someone else. Moreover, the person you sent the drawing does not supposed to have AutoCAD. You may use ‘Dwf’ (Drawing Web Format) files instead. They have designed for web publishing purposes at first and can be viewed by adding an ActiveX plug-in into MS Explorer, but later, user requests have AutoDESK published a distinct viewer to open ‘DWF’ files. You can download DWF Viewer for free by clicking here.

Plotting ‘Dwf’ files and sharing them with users having DWF Viewer is the topic of this article. But, I am not going to mention DWF plot again beacuse I have talked about it in detail in my ‘Plotting step by step’ article. Just choose ‘DWF6 ePlot.pc3’ for plotter device (Figure 1). After setting all options and pressing ‘OK’, AutoCAD will create a file in DWF format.

Now, you have a non-editable file. You are not supposed to worry about publishing it any more. If you downloaded and installed DWF Viewer, double-clicking on file should open the file automatically (Figure 2).

Figure.2 A General View of DWF Viewer Program

You can pan and zoom on the file and plot it which is sufficient for those who does not have AutoCAD software. Plotting parameters like ‘linewieght’ are already set since you have done it during plot. There are some softwares to make some editing on these kinds of files yet, they are not free. If you want to edit and plot the file, I advice Autodesk’s Design Review.

I am going to mention publishing your drawings on web in my future articles.

Regards.

Related Blog:

• Beyond the Paper

Related Articles:

• Advanced plotting using Layouts
• Taking printout step by step
• Getting JPEG printouts
• Pack & Send your projects using e-Transmit

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