In last month’s tutorial “Easier Plotting Part 1 – Layouts And Templates” we looked at how saving standard Layouts in Drawing Templates can reduce the need to set up your standard plotting settings each time you create a new Drawing or Layout. In this lesson we will look at how you can use Page Setups to store different plotting setups in a single Layout.
The important concept here is to think of a Layout as a sheet rather than a set of plotting settings. A single sheet may be plotted several different ways, for instance full-size at 34×22 and half-size at 11×17. But there should only be one copy of that sheet in the drawing. If you made individual Layouts to plot the same sheet two different ways, when there are changes to the information saved in the Layout, (such as an update to the text in the Title Block), this change would need to be made in each layout. This is at the least duplicated effort on your part but it also multiplies the opportunity for errors to be made.
This is where Page Setups come in. Page Setups are plotting settings saved within a Layout. So a single Layout can have multiple Page Setups. This means that in our example with the full-size and half-size plots, you would just have two Page Setups in one Layout, rather than two Layouts. And if any changes need to be made to the information saved in the Layout, then it only needs to be done one time. Now let’s look at the process of using Page Setups in this example.
Create a Layout that is set up to plot using a 34×22 sheet including a title block and a viewport.
To save these settings as a Page Setup pick the <<Add>> button in the upper right corner of the dialog box.
Enter a Page Setup name of “Full-Size” and pick <<OK>>.
You will now see the new Page Setup name shown in the drop-down list in the upper right corner of the dialog box.
Next make the changes needed for the half-size plots. Change the Paper Size to 11×17. Set the Plot area to Extents and the Scale to 1:2. You might also want to change the Plot Device or the Plot Style table, so that the half-size plots use lighter pen weights. Once the settings are the way you want them for the half-size plots, select the <<Add>> button again and save these settings as a Page Setup named “Half-Size”.
Now that the two Page Setups are saved you can switch between them by just selecting the desired one from the drop down list. This is only one example of ways Page Setups can make plotting easier for you. There are many other ways that this concept can be used in your own office. It is also important to remember that Page Setups are saved in the Drawing and can also be saved in Drawing Templates. So along with saving some standard Layouts in your Drawing Template it is also a great idea to save any standard Page Setups.
