Plotting Drawings

[Jeew-m]

Hi All,

Is their a difference between printing a drawing as a hard copy directly from AutoCAD and printing as hard copy after plotting to a pdf.?

What is the best practice.?

Thanks in advance.

[ian.mag]

Hey @Jeew-m 

In my experience yes. Sometimes I found that when printing after plotting to hard copy, the line wights may have been less defined in that they come out much lighter and not as thick as intended. Sometimes they also get more defined in that they come out to be more thick. I know this may be some printer setting but there actually is a difference.

Another thing is the periphery borders for the drawing printed after plotting pdf are more often than not greater than directly printing from AutoCAD. Again, this may be a setting in my printer but to avoid all that I just print directly from AutoCAD, and this is what I would recommend.

[dgorsman]

I see very little difference between the two in final results.  More and more companies are switching to PDF printing only, to save on both printing supplies and shredding services.  Since they usually need PDF anyways, those that still print hard copy will do so from the PDF. 

There is no "reduced size" when printing PDF.  If the drawing size is A1, it's printed to PDF as A1; if it's 11x17, it's printed at 11x17.