Overview

Printing in AutoCAD is a bit more complicated than in other applications and for a good reason. You will often be required to print a drawing multiple times over the course of a project, and you will want your drawings to be consistent from one print to the next. And since AutoCAD is a graphics program, you spend a greater amount of time laying out your drawings on a sheet in order to visually organize your work.

This chapter covers two aspects of printing: preparing your drawing s final appearance in a Layout tab and printing your drawing. The Layout tabs let you organize your drawing in a precise way and include standard drawing borders and titles while giving you flexibility in the scale and orientation of your drawing on the printed sheet. Finally, you can get an accurate view of how your drawing will look before you commit it to paper.

AutoCAD s printing feature offers more than just orientation and sheet sizes. You can store your printer settings so you can easily and accurately reproduce prints. Since AutoCAD offers some advanced 3D capabilities, you can combine 3D views with 2D drawings. You can even include information about the file so you can easily identify the source for the printed drawing.

If you re new to AutoCAD and you need to get started with printing, you ll want to read the first section of this chapter carefully. It provides an overview of the layout and printing features in a tutorial format.