Plotting in AutoCAD has gone through some changes over the years. The most significant change is that starting with AutoCAD 2000 the plot settings are saved in each drawing, which is both good and bad. If you have only one plotter and don’t have to plot drawings from other companies, this is a good feature. If you have two or more plotters, switching between them can be a very tedious task. If you have to plot drawings from other companies, you constantly receive errors that a plotter doesn’t exist because their plot settings don’t match your plot settings. To solve both of these issues, I have developed two custom programs: one automatic and one manual.
The Custom Automatic Plot command can be used on any drawing that conforms to the project specs: like proper title block, layer colors, etc. The CAD user has to pick only the plotter and sheet size. The rest is done automatically. The plot settings CTB file is specified by either drawing folder or drawing type, depending on your needs. It even has a feature to put gray-scale stamps on the plots like "Check Plot", "Approval", "Reference", etc. as a watermark. The user's initials or login name can be put on as a watermark as well, so the plot can be identified. This system requires plot support files to be customized for the plotters that you use, which I can help create.
The Custom Manual Plot command is more flexible than the Automatic version, but requires a little more user input. It allows you to pick the plot settings file of your choice, and the settings that you specify will be the default for the next manual plot. This is very similar to AutoCAD R14’s plotting, which I find many users out there wish never changed.
I can easily create new versions of these two programs (using the ones above as a base) to meet your requirements.
