Running PLOT

The basic information that PLOT needs in order to process a plot file is as follows:

• The type of processing which is required; that is, the device driver that is to be used for the file translation process.

• The name of the input plot file that is to be processed.

• The destination to which the resulting output file is to be sent.

The full syntax for the command to run PLOT is:

plot driver  plotfile  output  [options]

The command arguments have the following significance:

• driver = the name of the output device driver.

  The available device drivers are:

  BENSON

  CALCOMP

  DXF

  HOUSTON

  HP or HPGL

  HPGL2

  LASERJET

  LIST

  PDMS

  PENMAN

  PNG

  POSTSCRIPT or PS

  SCREEN

  XDUMP

A full description of the functions of each of these is given in Device Drivers.

The Hewlett-Packard HP/HPGL and, to a lesser extent, the Calcomp plotter codes have been adopted as industry standards, and many other plotters are designed to emulate one or other of them. The corresponding PLOT drivers may often be used successfully with such plotters, but only when the emulation offers true compatibility with the standard.

• plotfile = the name of the pseudo-code file which is to be processed.

  The file name must conform to the file naming conventions for your computer.

  PLOT automatically recognizes the input plot file format used (PDMS, HPGL, DXF or GPGP) by identifying some coding characters at the start of the file, so there is no provision for you to enter this information.

• output = the destination to which the output data is to be sent.

  This is either a file name or the command prompt window.

  If you specify a file name, this must conform to the file naming conventions for your computer. The command prompt window is specified by setting the output to be ‑0 (minus-zero).

  The output data file can for instance be sent to a printer or plotter using operating system commands, or it can be viewed with a suitable program, including Plot itself.

  Plot files can also be sent directly to a compatible printer or plotter using the Windows print command.

• options = specific options to set values and control processing.

  These allow you to control aspects of how the output files are produced.

  Some options are general in their scope and apply to any output device driver; these are described in General Command Line Options. Other options are relevant only to specific device drivers; these are described separately in Device Drivers.

  Note: The driver-specific options must be enclosed between quotation marks and if there is more than one option, they must be separated by commas.

Command Line Examples

plot pdms plot12 ulay.pl

This command sends data from the file plot12 to the file ulay.pl in pseudo-code format. The latter file could then be used as an underlay in a drawing module, for example.

plot screen plota2 -0

This reads graphical data from file plota2 and displays it in a window on your workstation screen. Remember that line 0 always goes to the command prompt window.

plot hp view.pl view.hp scale=0.8 "CE Y"

Plot reads data from view.pl and writes it to the file view.hp, applying a general option to scale the output dimensions to be 0.8 of those of the input file. Another driver option specifies that the plotter has a physical coordinate origin at the centre of the paper.