PDF or Portable Document Format’s relatively small size and being portable has made it very easy to view, print, transfer and distribute, therefore it has gained popularity in many industries including the CAD industry.

Many designers would choose to convert their DWG files to PDF format in order to be easily viewed, check, printed or transferred. DWG file format requires specific software such CAD or CAD viewer, and you may be having trouble with your drawing’s version or compatibility, but with a file in PDF format, you don’t need to worry all these things.

Print your CAD drawings to PDF

Printing your CAD drawing to PDF is just like printing a normal drawing: Open your drawing, and click the Plot button, as shown in the following picture,

A new dialog box would pop up, as shown in the following picture,

The setup of Paper size, Plot area, Scale and Plot style is just like a normal printing setup except that we need to customize some properties for the PDF printing, as shown in the following picture.

Export to PDF

Click Export > PDF to export your CAD drawings to PDF, as shown in the following picture,

Then click “Option” button in the popped up dialog box, a new dialog box containing more options would pop up, as shown in the following picture,

As you can see, there isn’t much difference between the “Export to PDF” and “Plot to PDF”.

Publish

We can Batch print our CAD drawings to PDF, even to PDF with multiple pages, as shown in the following picture,

This Publish function seems simple to use, but please note that in order to successfully publish your CAD drawings, you have to pay attention to the setup and saving of every layout.

Attach a PDF Underlay

With Attach function, we can attach a PDF as underlay or reference.

Enter AT, then press Enter, as shown in the following picture,

A new dialog box would pop up indicating you to select reference file, now you can select the PDF you’d like to attach, and the Attach PDF Underlay dialog box would pop up, as shown in the following picture,

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