CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY TRAINING INSTITUTE

LESSON PLAN

Class DAE 3rd Year (A&D)

Subject CAD-CAM
Code AD-373
Topic plotter
Method Lecture
No. of periods 02
Place Class Room
Training Aids White Board, Maker ,Multi media
Instructor Engr. Asif Imran

(Vetted By)

Date_________________ HOD_____________
Contents Time (Min)

Printing and Plotting

Plotting is the term for producing physical prints using a large-format printer, which is
either networked or directly connected to an AutoCAD® workstation.

Setting Up a System Printer

The first thing you’ll need to do is set up a system printer, which contains drivers that your
operating system uses to control the output device. System printers are not specific to Auto
CAD; device manufacturers supply drivers, which you then install to become printers on your
system.
If you are reading this book at work, you undoubtedly already have a system printer or your
CAD manager has installed one for you. For the purposes of this book, however, you will
install a driver for the HP Design Jet 800 plotter (an industry workhorse), whether or not you
own this device. You will be using the HP Design Jet 800 system printer in this chapter. The
following steps guide you in installing this typical system printer:
1. Open your browser, and type HP Design Jet 800 42 driver as a Google search. Select the
first search result, or go to www.hp.com and search for Download Drivers and
Software.
2. Select your operating system from the list, and download the appropriate driver.
3. Install the driver following the manufacturer’s instructions. Select File:Port in the
installation options because you don’t have access to the actual device. If you did
have the physical device, you would select the relevant connection port, such as
Parallel, Ethernet, USB, or Wireless.

Setting Up an AutoCAD Plotter

Most programs send output directly to system printers, but AutoCAD is an exception.
AutoCAD has another layer of software between the program and the operating system known
as an AutoCAD plotter. In this section, you will set up an AutoCAD plotter that sends its
output to the system printer, which in turn hands off the print job to the output device itself.
1. In AutoCAD, type PLOTTERMANAGER and press Enter. The Windows
Explorer dialog box appears displaying the Add-A-Plotter Wizard and various
AutoCAD plotters that have the .pc3 file extension (see Figure 14.1).
Double-click the Add-A-Plotter Wizard. Read the Introduction page and click Next.
2. Select the System Printer radio button (see Figure 14.2) and click Next.

7. The final page of the Add Plotter wizard allows you to edit the newly created plotter driver
itself. Click the Edit Plotter Configuration button to do this.
8. Select the Device And Document Settings tab, and then select the Filter Paper Sizes node in
the Plotter Configuration Editor dialog box that appears. Click the Uncheck All button. You
should filter the list of paper sizes to display only the sizes you use. Scroll down the list, and
select the following paper sizes: Arch C (landscape) and Arch D (landscape). Figure 14.5
shows the result.
JEdit the Custom Properties in the Plotter Configuration Editor to access set-tings specific to the system
printer driver
Click OK to close the Plotter Configuration Editor. Click Finish to close the Add-A-Plotter
Wizard.
10. The new AutoCAD plotter driver you just created, HP DesignJet 800 Plotter.pc3, appears in
the Windows Explorer window that was opened in step 1 (see Figure 14.6). Close Windows
Explorer.