How to set up layout to make plotting easier

Aren’t you a little curious about Layout in CAD? Layout is a basic but powerful tool in design. With Layout, CAD users can better control their drawing scale and represent the drawing with several viewports, showing different area of the model. Also, layout has made plot setting up easier than ever.

In ZWCAD+, users can view and display the drawings with one or several models by setting up viewports in Layout. By default, there will be 2 layouts for 1 graphic, layout 1 and layout 2. Users can set up multiple layouts as they want. Each layout is with different plot setting up and paper size.

Let us show you how Layout works in the following steps.

l  In the model space, draw object with 1:1 scale, the same size as actual.

You can draw in full scale regardless of different scales in one sheet.

l  Switch to Layout 1 space, input the PAGESETUP command and Enter to the page set up dialog box, click on the Modify button. Complete the setting up for the printer, paper size, plot scale and drawing orientation, etc. And click on OK to complete set up.

l  Switch to layout space and this is the plotting area, make sure that all the graphics are within the printable range.

l  Insert the title block, you can copy or draw a title block in the Layout 1. Please be sure that the dimension of the title block should match with the paper size. The plotting area of the title block should be moved in the area of the dotted lines.

l  Input VPORTS and enter to the viewport dialog box, choose to create a single viewport. In the viewport, you can see the graphics in the models. Double click on the inside part of viewport and enter the model space. In the model space, you can edit and set up the viewport showing area of the graphics. Double click on the outside part of viewport to go back to the Layout.

l  Select viewport and input the command PROPERTIES, enter to open the property bar, set up a suitable Standard Scale and make the object present  appropriately within the viewport.

l  Annotate drawing with 1:1 annotation scale in the Layout.

l  Create a new viewport, set the viewport scale as two times to the last viewport scale. Dimensioning the objects in this viewport using the same dimension style. The dimension value will not change regardless of the viewport scale.

l  Select viewport, change its layer to Defpoints.

This way, the line boundary of the viewport will not be plotted as you plot out the drawing.

l  Now, the page setup is finished. If you plot drawing in this layout, the printer, paper size and other settings will be the same to the page setup, no need to setup the layout in model space again by manually, it will save you a lot of time to plot drawing.

You might be interested:

ZWCAD Hot Tips: Hiding and Showing Layers in Different Viewports

Differences between “publish” and “pltplot” in CAD

kitchen layout software and kitchen remodel software

Freeze a particular layer in a particular viewport  with CAD software