topic Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export in Fusion API and Scripts Forum

Mass PDF Drawing Export

bmxjeff — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 18:46:30 GMT

I'm working on a large project. Like 200 Prints+ Does anyone know of a way to export The Drawings in PDF for a Project?

I found one for STEP files. One for reporting the PDF's would save me .. like 2 days of opening files : )

Thanks!

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

BrianEkins — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 01:06:52 GMT

There's almost not drawing functionality exposed through the API. The one thing that is there is the functionality to export PDF. Here's a small sample that illustrates it.

import adsk.core, adsk.drawing, traceback def run(context): ui = None try: app = adsk.core.Application.get() ui = app.userInterface # Get the Drawing object. drawing = adsk.drawing.Drawing.cast(app.activeProduct) if drawing is None: ui.messageBox('A drawing must be active.') return expMgr: adsk.drawing.DrawingExportManager = drawing.exportManager pdfOptions = expMgr.createPDFExportOptions('C:\Temp\Sheet1.pdf') pdfOptions.sheetRange = "1" expMgr.execute(pdfOptions) pdfOptions = expMgr.createPDFExportOptions('C:\Temp\Sheet2.pdf') pdfOptions.sheetRange = "2" expMgr.execute(pdfOptions) pdfOptions = expMgr.createPDFExportOptions('C:\Temp\SheetAll.pdf') pdfOptions.sheetsToExport = adsk.drawing.PDFSheetsExport.AllPDFSheetsExport expMgr.execute(pdfOptions) except: if ui: ui.messageBox('Failed:\n{}'.format(traceback.format_exc()))

You might still run into some issues depending on what you need to do. As I said, very little drawing functionality is exposed through the API. Something that is not there is accessing the sheets. If you need to open a drawing and export each sheet as PDF, that's not easy because you can't find out how many sheets there are. I guess you could write out sheet 1, and sheet 2, and keep going until it fails. Of course, if you can't access sheets, you can't get any information about the sheet, like it's name, if you wanted to use that as part of the filename.

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

gvisca44 — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 00:52:30 GMT

Try this: @bmxjeff

When you run it - you are prompted to select all the drawings (multiselect). Then prompted for an output file location. Then set and wait ... but a hell of a lot faster that doing it manually.

No error checking / drawing validity checking ... just a very simple export of what you've created.

PDF Export options are in the exportDrawingsToPDF function. Change them as you see fit.

import adsk.core import adsk.fusion import adsk.drawing import traceback app = None ui = None design:adsk.fusion.Design = None def run(context): global app, ui, design ui = None try: app = adsk.core.Application.get() ui = app.userInterface drawingFiles:adsk.core.DataFiles = getDrawingFiles() adsk.doEvents() #outputFolder:adsk.core.DataFolder = getDrawingOutputFolder() outputDirectory = getDrawingOutputDirectory() for drawingFile in drawingFiles: #doc:adsk.core.Document = app.documents.open(drawingFile) drawingDoc:adsk.drawing.DrawingDocument = app.documents.open(dataFile=drawingFile, visible=True) #drawingFile. exportDrawingToPdf(drawingDoc, outputDirectory) drawingDoc.close(saveChanges=False) except: if ui: ui.messageBox('Failed:\n{}'.format(traceback.format_exc())) def getDrawingFiles() -> adsk.core.DataFiles: cloudDialog = ui.createCloudFileDialog() cloudDialog.title = 'Select drawings to export.' cloudDialog.isMultiSelectEnabled = True cloudDialog.filter = 'f2d' dialogResult = cloudDialog.showOpen() if dialogResult == adsk.core.DialogResults.DialogOK: #dataFolder:adsk.core.DataFolder = cloudDialog.dataFolder dataFiles:adsk.core.DataFiles = cloudDialog.dataFiles return dataFiles def getDrawingOutputFolder() -> adsk.core.DataFolder: cloudDialog = ui.createCloudFileDialog() cloudDialog.title = 'Select output folder.' dialogResult = cloudDialog.showSave() if dialogResult == adsk.core.DialogResults.DialogOK: dataFolder:adsk.core.DataFolder = cloudDialog.dataFolder dataFiles:adsk.core.DataFiles return dataFolder def getDrawingOutputDirectory(): folderDialog = ui.createFolderDialog() folderDialog.title = 'Selection output folder.' dialogResult = folderDialog.showDialog() if dialogResult == adsk.core.DialogResults.DialogOK: foldername = folderDialog.folder return foldername else: return def exportDrawingToPdf( drawingDoc:adsk.drawing.DrawingDocument, #outputFolder:adsk.core.DataFolder outputDir:str ): msg = f'{drawingDoc.name}' app.log(msg) #msg = f'{outputFolder.name}' #app.log(msg) msg = f'{outputDir}' app.log(msg) outputFileName = drawingDoc.name filename = outputDir + '/' + outputFileName + '.pdf' exportManager:adsk.drawing.DrawingExportManager = drawingDoc.drawing.exportManager PDFOptions:adsk.drawing.PDFExportOptions = exportManager.createPDFExportOptions(filename) PDFOptions.filename = filename PDFOptions.sheetsToExport = adsk.drawing.PDFSheetsExport.AllPDFSheetsExport PDFOptions.openPDF = False PDFOptions.useLineWeights = False exportOK = exportManager.execute(PDFOptions) return exportOK

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

markstorer — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:02:57 GMT

Many thanks for this - It was exactly what I was looking for !!!. (During the process of creating/ installing your script, I even learnt Python )

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

markstorer — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 14:03:47 GMT

Many thanks for this - It was exactly what I was looking for !!!.

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

bmxjeff — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 15:53:09 GMT

Thanks for your work on this Glenn!

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

zenmech-015 — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 09:00:46 GMT

Thanks for the script, it works. By chance does anyone know of a script to auto update drawings to latest reference of 3d models instead of opening it.

Re: Mass PDF Drawing Export

kandennti — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 12:23:49 GMT

Hi @zenmech-015 -san.

I don't think there's a way to update without opening the document.

If you open the document, the DrawingDocument.updateAllReferences method should be useful.
https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-27FD805F-2A69-462F-B255-213DA00BA85A