HELP! New Mac / Autocad 15 / No Printer and can't get PDF to plat ARCH E1

[Anonymous]

Hello!

I am new at community postings and questions, so excuse me please.  I have a new Mac Pro, formerly a PC girl.  I do not have a printer to install, but would like to only plot to PDF.  I've tried to install Acrobat Pro and also a 3rd party PDRwriter to no avail.  The layouts do not even print.  Can anyone help?  Thanks!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forums.  And Mac, too. 

I am not 100% sure if this will help.  Try printing and choosing save as pdf at the bottom left corner of the dialogue.  Also, try export.  To get consitency and easily go through the trial and error process use the Page Setup Manager.......

I think you will need to add a printer.  In Mac system preferences /Printer dialogue click the "+" add printer button.  Choose the "IP" option. In the "address" field type "1" wait for the "add" button to become active.  YOu can use a generic postscript printer. Or you can select to use "selected Printer Software"  Choose the wide format printer of your liking.  I use HP t2300 PLC3 raster. Then hit "add".  It will tell you it cant find it.  Chose to install it anyway.  I believe this will make it easier to handle printing to pdf.  For printing in autocad I highly reccomend using the "page Setup Manager" you can also use the export option under the "File" menu.

This is all off the top of my head so let me know if it works or needs clarifying. Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much!  Adding the printer worked.  I am still not understanding what the problem was, or how adding the printer, "1" fixed it, but I can now save the file to PDF. 

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

When I Export to PDF using the Export command in 2015 AutoCAD LT for Mac I get no output whatsoever, no matter what printer is set as defaut.

Instead, I have had good success using an older open source printer called PDFwriter for Mac. Evan Troxel had a good post on how to set up on his site, Get Method. Here is the link: http://getmethod.com/blog/printing-large-pdfs-on-a-mac.

It has all of the typical large format paper sizes and works with the Batch Publish command. Here is the sourceforge download link:

http://pdfwriterformac.sourceforge.net

-Bill