Publish in CAD—-the simplest batch print function

Many people are looking for batch print tools and there are actually many batch print tools that you can find. But different people have different needs:

some companies put a few uniform drawing frames in one drawing and need them to be automatically identified and separately printed; some companies need to select multiple drawings and have them printed according to uniform settings; some companies are more demanding, the drawing frames and plot scale are different, some drawings have multiple drawing frames while others have one drawing frame, but at the same time, they want the CAD system to be automatically identified and the plot scale be labeled and the drawing be optimized to save paper. All in all, it’s very hard to meet all needs.

But if you have drawn according to the standard specification and have custom the setting properly, then you can use the batch print tool that’s embedded in CAD system: Publish.

Publish has provided a simple way to create drawing sheet set or electronic graphics set, which is to export multiple drawings and layouts to DWF files ( to PDF files in higher version), or to batch print.

After executing the Publish command, the Publish dialog will pop up and will automatically add the current model and layout to the drawing list, as shown in the following picture.

Click the “Ad Sheets” button to add other drawings. The model and layout of the added drawing will also be added to the drawing list, we can select model or layout in the lower right side of the dialog box. Or after adding all items, select the redundant layouts and delete them. After adding all the drawings, we can custom the Publish at the bottom.

The dialog box, buttons and options in Publish command are easy to use. The key to batch print using Publish function is to custom settings for models or layouts that to be plotted.

We also need to custom the settings when plotting drawings, such as selecting printer, set the print range, plot scale, plot style and other parameters. After setting all these parameters, click “apply to layout” in the Plot dialog box and all the settings will be applied to the current layout and no need to custom the settings again every time you plot the drawings. If you don’t click the apply to layout option, then you’ll have to do it every time you plot.

Except for that, every layout can save a page setup, CAD system also provides “page setup manager”, which enables us to save some page setups, use them in the current drawings and export to other drawings. When publishing, we can use the page setups to other drawings only when the frames of the two drawings are in the same position and can use the same print setups.

So in order to use the batch print of drawings, we can not simply add drawings and some options in the Publish dialog box, more work needs to be done in the course of the drawings according to the proper specifications and standard page setups of Publish function.

A few tips are shown in the followings:

1. The model of drawings to be published or every layout can only have one drawing frame.
2. We’d better have set the page setups pf the drawing model or layout space.
3. If all the drawings are to use the same page setups, then they need to have the same drawing frame position and size.
4. Make sure that every model and layout is “error-free”
5. If you want to get the best printing effect, you’d better select some layouts and click “preview” to check.
6. Make sure the printers that you have set can work normally.
7. Before batch print, we’d better test with two or three pieces of paper to avoid any waste of paper.

The above are tips that I concluded, if you have other ideas and tips, please feel free to share with us!