| CAD Essentials Whether
you're a new CAD user starting out through the portal of opportunity that IntelliCAD has
brought to engineering, or a jaded lifer, still doing time a CAD workstation, CAD
Essentials gives you a chance to recap core elements of CAD.
IntelliCAD, print, plot, setup |
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| Having covered the basics of setting
up layers, colors and linetypes to adopt specific CAD standards, it's important to know
how to configure and change your print settings to ensure reliable hardcopy output —
in other words, we need to know about printing.IntelliCAD 98 supports printing to plotters with the WinLINE
plotter driver, manufactured by Software
Mechanics Pty. Ltd. This company has developed a version of its WinLINE driver
specifically for IntelliCAD 98 and you’ll find it on the CD, in the directory \IntelliCAD
98\Drivers\Printers. For complete instructions on installing this driver, see the file
Readme.Install.NT.txt or Readme.Install.W95.txt, depending on your operating
system.
[Ed: This article applies to prining with
IntelliCAD 98 1.0a, b, and c. The printing facilities were dramatically overhauled on
service release d. Click here for more info.]
Configuring a printer
To configure this driver, choose Settings and Printers from the Windows Start Menu and
double-click on the Add Printer icon. Depending on your operating system, the options from
here will vary a little, but choose the Have Disk button when prompted and browse to the
printers folder on the installation CD to choose oemsetup.inf. A dialogue box
provides options for most common plotters.
The WinLINE printer driver supports most common
plotters
Further plotter configuration is available from the Print
Setup option in IntelliCAD's File menu. By clicking on the Properties button for the newly
installed printer, a dialogue box with tabs titled Page Setup and Advanced provides a
number of flexible options for print configuration. Options within the Advanced tab
include paper size, orientation and resolution. A range of Carousel options provide
detailed setup of pen table information.
Color, line width and density can be independently
configured for each pen and these pen settings can be stored to a Carousel (car) file. By
saving and loading various carousel files we have the flexibility to work with multiple
pen setups for different clients and varying sheet sizes. To change the default settings
for all printing, it's best to set the printer options at the Windows level.
Carousel options provide detailed pen
configuration
Making sure what you see
is what you get
After the Print Settings are fairly well established, it's well worth doing a Print
Preview prior to the actual print. Print Preview shows how the selected area fits on to
the print media at the nominated scale factor. From here you can select the Print Settings
button and toggle between the Settings dialogue box and the preview to fine-tune the
output. Selecting Print from the File menu takes you directly to the Print Settings
dialogue. These settings alter the print configuration for the current drawing only and
settings revert to standard Windows defaults for subsequent drawings.
A Print Preview is highly recommended.
For some settings, such as sheet size, orientation and pen
setup, you need to return to the Print Setup dialogue box. From the Print Settings
dialogue you can jump straight into Print Setup or Preview and work within these three
main print areas to optimize the output.
The Print Settings dialogue works interactively
with Print Preview.
Specifying a print area
There has been much discussion relating to the most reliable method of specifying
print area. While many companies configure their system to reliably print limits or
extents, the only way you can really be sure of what you're getting is to specify a
windowed print area. This is also the only option that deals with the possibility of a
single drawing file containing multiple sheets. I recommend using Window as the most
consistently reliable option.
With this brief guide you should be able to configure a
printer and store carousel files to manage multiple plotter configurations. The Print
button on the Standard toolbar sends a drawing to the default IntelliCAD printer using the
most recently established settings — so only use this button when you're absolutely
confident of all print settings.
Steve Hunter |
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