Setting Plotting Options

Draft allows you to plot files in a variety of formats. As an Administrator you can enter or select operating system command strings that enable users to plot their files in a variety of formats.

To select or enter output formats, select Settings > Plotting Defaults from the main Draft Administration menu. The Plotting Options form will appear.

This form contains predefined command strings for PostScript and HPGL format conversion and printing. For PostScript and HPGL options, make sure that you provide a proper Windows network path to the chosen printer.

The System command string has several components to it.

Example

plotcadc FILE ps \printserver\psprint01

Note: The Plot Viewer program does not print at a true 100% scale, and therefore your print will be slightly smaller.

An example of the modified form showing the PlotViewer entry is shown below.

Also available under the Windows O/S, it is possible to plot to any printer using the Screen pre-viewer:

plotcadc FILE screen -0

Here, the Plot program is executed with the Screen argument. A pre-viewer form is shown which enable you to zoom in and out of the plot file.

1. To send the plot file to a printer, press the button sequence Cntrl-P and the standard Windows print form will be displayed, allowing you to choose any printer as the destination. For further information on the subject of the Plot executable see the manual PLOT User Guide.

2. Once you have set all of the plotting options, select the one you require to be set as the default by clicking on the appropriate option button at the left of the form then press OK.

   The Save button will save the settings, which can be recalled by clicking the Load button. The Load defaults button will load the predefined plotting settings.

   The Reset button cancels any changes made to the form since it was opened.

PRINT Option

This option instructs the system to use the standard Windows printing dialog for printing the selected sheet, as shown below:

This would send the picture directly to the printer without creating an intermediate plot file.

Other Documents

This option instructs the system to create a graphical file or a PDF file representing the given picture instead of printing it. The available output formats are shown below:

The plotting options form supports previewing the output instead of printing. Clicking the Configure viewers button displays a form where a command string can be entered for each file type that will launch an appropriate viewer.

Other Plotting Options

The output color can be controlled by selecting one of the Colour correction mode options:

• Click on the Save button to save the changes.

  

  The viewing of the PDF files is handled internally by launching the Acrobat Reader application, which must be installed on the workstation. There are no configuration options for the PDF files.

  For all other supported file types it is possible to specify the command to be executed in order to view a particular file. If you leave the command field empty, or containing the text 'Not specified – default Windows action used', the handling of the particular file type will be determined by Windows operating system. The action taken will be exactly the same as if you double clicked on the file in Windows Explorer.

  If a non-default action is required, the proper command line must be provided, using the word FILE to represent the full file path of the file to be shown.

  For example in order to view BMP files in Microsoft Paint, the following command should be entered in the BMP files (*.bmp) field:

  mspaint "FILE"

  To view the JPG files in Irfanview (provided that it is installed in C:\Program Files\Irfanview), the following command should be entered in the JPG files (*.jpg) field:

  "C:\Program Files\Irfanview\iview32.exe" "FILE" /fs

  Note: After changing the viewers' configuration remember to save the plotting options in the main form, as the viewers' settings are stored together with the plotting options.