From the course: AutoCAD: Plotting & Publishing

Model tab: Page setup - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD: Plotting & Publishing

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Model tab: Page setup

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- [Voiceover] So we're staying in our 03_PageSetup.dwg file and what we're going to look at now is creating a page setup for a drawing that we might want to create in the Model tab. So you can see that we're in the same drawing. I'm in the Model tab where everything is full size and what I want to do is create a page setup for small drawing of Staircase A. Now Staircase A is the left-hand staircase in the plan view there, so what I want to do is set up a view of that staircase on a sheet of paper so that I can perhaps take it out on site and go and measure up and sketch all of the dimensions onto the sheet of paper. Just an example. A bit of an old-school example. It's the sort of thing that I used to do when I surveyed buildings back in the day. Maybe now you might take the drawing out on an iPad, for example, and measure up that way, using something like AutoCAD A360 maybe, or something along those lines. However, means to an end, what we're going to do is set up our page setup so that we can actually have that physical element to our drawing. So I'm in the Model tab. Now I can either go up to the Output tab on the ribbon and click on Page Setup Manager here, or I can right-click on the Model tab when I'm in it and go to Page Setup Manager there. Now you'll notice, we don't actually have any page setups in place for the Model tab. You can see we've got the default one with the asterisk model there, and that goes to a standard A4 size, which is 210 by 297 millimeters in a metric drawing, because we're working in metric millimeters right now. So we click on New and that will bring up the new page setup dialog. So what I'm going to do is create an A4 sheet, for site, let's say, so we'll do site and we'll do a dash there, and we'll say Stair A, like that, so we know it's the Staircase A. Now I can start with an existing page setup. Now I don't actually have any, so I'm just going to go with the original model setup that we had for the Model tab. So I'll click on OK. Now this may look remarkably similar to the plot dialog box. That's because it is. What you're doing is you're just setting up a group of default settings and naming them as a page setup so that you can use them over and over again rather than keep going into the plot dialog box and having to reset the seconds all the time. So there's the name of our page setup, print to plotter. I'm just going to select something like DWG to PDF, like that. Now the reason I've done that is I can then make it electronic and print it off, but more importantly, if it's a PDF, I can send it to other people without AutoCAD and they can look at it in something like Acrobat Reader, for example. Now the paper size is defaulted to ISO A4 anyway, because that was the default for the Model tab in the asterisk. But here's where I'm going to change the ball game. I'm going to go down here What to Plot, and I'm going to select Window. Now the reason I'm selecting Window is I want to pick the area of the Model tab that I want to print, so I'm going to put my crosshair there, click, just drag it around the staircase, like that, as if I was doing a zoom window, for example, and click again. Now you'll notice it looks a bit weird there in the preview. Don't worry, we'll sort that out in a minute. What we need to do is center the plot on the sheet, because it's not going to be to scale, notice the tick box there, Fit to Paper, because you want it to fit on the sheet. Now the staircase is in a portrait orientation. Our sheet is 210 by 297, so you can see that's also in a portrait orientation, so our drawing orientation also needs to be portrait. So that little shaded area there is our staircase on our sheet. Now my plot style table, I'm just going to select Monochrome, which is black and white for AutoCAD. Assign that to all layouts? No, let's just do it for the Model tab. Things like your plot options you don't really need to worry about, 'cause this is like a one-off A4 sheet that you're taking on the site to perhaps sketch on. It's also going to go out to a PDF if you save it out, so you could potentially take it out on a tablet or an iPad. So I'm not actually going to leave this saved as such. What I am going to do is I'm going to preview it. And I go into the preview, and there's my A4 sheet with my window selection of my staircase all ready to go. So I right-click and I exit and then I just click on OK, and now my A4 site Stair A page setup is saved for use with the Model tab. So I could potentially select it there, double-click, and it applies it to the Model tab. So whenever I plot now, it will go to those settings. Now if I want to change that, I would need to create a new page setup to perhaps have a different window area in the Model tab, but it's a really neat tool. I can go anywhere in the Model tab, set up a page setup for that part of the Model tab, give it a name, and it's there and all the settings are saved. I can go to them any time I want to. So I'll close the Page Setup Manager now and there you go. That's how you set up a page setup in you Model tab in your AutoCAD drawing.

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