print multiple files at once

[donalmaguire]

i will be recieving hundreds of fabrication drawings that need to be printed can i print them without having to open each drawing and plotting to printer. im using autocad 2010. i have read about using publish and page setups but cannot make sense of the instruction. id be greatful for any help

[Alfred.NESWADBA · Accepted solution]

Hi,

what was not understandable when you read the help about _PUBLISH.

At least yes, that's the command that can be used to plot multiple layouts from multiple drawings.

What might be irritating at the beginning is that you have first to create page setup's so they can be plotted to your devices (as I guess when you received some drawings from elsewhere that the plotter settings are different to yours).

So what is exactly the question you have, what have you read, what have you tried and what is not working in the way you thought?

The help is >>>there<<<.

Good luck, - alfred -

[3wood]

I think eventually you have to open each drawing and print manually.

Sometimes drawings are in different sheet sizes.

Usually you don't have same printer as the sender.

All these will affect you using PUBLISH.

The best way is asking the sender forward you a full set of pdf file. They can use PBULISH to make it much faster than you.

Just make a 2 minutes phone to save hours of time.

[morganism3]

Let me clarify what PUBLISH does. It will not help you here but is worth knowing for the future. When you open up AutoCAD and just start drawing on a blank page, if you look in the lower left corner, you'll see some tabs that say "model", "Layout 1", and "Layout 2". For big projects with lots of different pictures, most people make more tabs, rename them, and use them to put each page of the project on its own page. PUBLISH does one of two things: it can: 1.) print all the pages on different tabs at the same time, without making you click on every single tab, or 2.) save all the different pages on different tabs together as one .pdf file.

In this case it would not help you print it any faster. It would only help you if the hundreds of drawings you had were already in the same file.

If the person sending you this info happens to have them all together in one big file they could send you instead, that's the only way you could avoid opening every one.

If, in the future, you want to learn more about PUBLISH, Google the words "paperspace" and "viewports", this will give you a better idea of how people use the tabs in the corner to organize big projects where they'll need the publish command.

And I always Google for AutoCAD questions, there's a lot of easy-to-read websites but the directions in AutoCAD itself I find too hard to understand.

[RockyBrown4134]

For what it's worth, Here is how we use PUBLISH.
In our drawing templates, we have page configurations based on paper size and the plotter/printer being used. I also have a master drawing called "All-in-one.dwg" which has all of the page configurations in it.

With a blank drawing open, activate the PUBLISH command. We Have the option set to not to load "model space" tabs. I remove the blank drawing from the list. From Windows Explorer, I go to the folder that has the drawings that need to be plotted. Select the files, drag and drop them into the list. Now you can select the page configuration for each. You can also select multiple files and select common page configurations.

If the file does not have a page configuration, you can import it from the "All-in-one.dwg".

Explore Page Configurations and PUBLISH Options. I'll post a sample Monday when I get back in the office.

Hope this helps.

[RockyBrown4134 · Accepted solution]

Here is a sample as promised.

Explore Page Setup Manager, ant the highlighted options.

  

Also, explore Publish, ant the highlighted options, and how they relate to the page setups.

Hope this helps.

[hamzasirri · Accepted solution]

You can use Batch Plot to publish multiple sheets or drawings to Printer , PDF or DWF files. see below link

http://www.autocadproblems.com/2015/06/plot-multiple-drawings-print-multiple.html

[diwa1919]

Actually you can print multiple file through batch printing. Steps would be;

1. open each file and finalized through print command the parrameters per sheet print, like paper size, plot style, etcs. Which you usually do whenever you complete a CAD file. 

2. Press control print, then choose batch print. 

3. open a file explorer and open to the file location where you will be printing the other CAD files. 

4. select all the cad files you want to print, click and drag it into the batch print window on your cad file. 

5. delete the items with the 'model' word

then click publish. 

- it will take awhile though.