Batch Plot your Designs with Autodesk Productstream

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  Brian Schanen joined Autodesk in 2005 as a Product Designer and currently is a Customer Success Engineer for Autodesk’s Data Management products. Brian has taught at Autodesk University numerous times and has authored white papers on Vault and Productstream. He works with customers to implement a complete digital prototyping solution specializing in Autodesk Inventor, Autodesk Vault and Productstream. Brian lives near Detroit, Michigan.

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  Batch Plot your Designs with Autodesk Productstream
  August 11, 2008, 10:40 PM Brian Schanen

  Autodesk Productstream provides extended data management functionality to collect a complete drawing set for a major design and batch plot to a selected device. The Plot command can be launched from a variety of ways within Productstream. The first is from the Standard toolbar. This brings up the dialog and you can add files or Items, and their related sheets. The other popular method is from a group selection like a Bill of Materials tree or Saved Search.

  

  During the collection process, or once all drawing sheets are collected, the Batch Plot list can be saved off to an xml file on the user’s machine. This allows for submitting to a device at a later time or when all the design layouts are ready. When all sheets are ready for printing, or at any time, you can load the plot job, modify the settings, and submit the job.

  

  From the plot manager, each sheet is represented in a row and has individual settings that can be modified such as the number of copies, target device, and paper size. A preview of the file is provided for quick validation of setup. To ensure that the drawing sheets are accurate and up-to-date, upon submitting the job if there are newer versions of any of the sheets you will be prompted the list may need to be refreshed.

  

  Alternatively, you can click the refresh button at anytime to scan for new versions from Items or Files. The plot manager will load in the newer version of the files and sheets.

  

  Once you have all the latest data for printing, you can apply a global Plot Stamp and watermark to your sheets. This is configurable through an options dialog box and has provisions for File Name, Date, Time, as seen in the image below.

  

   

  -Brian Schanen

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Comments

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  August 14, 2008 09:22 AM Steve Walton

  2 Questions: 1. All of your screen shots show dwf files. Does this tool work with plain idw files? 2. Can you send the batch job to a pdf printer?

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  February 10, 2009 03:22 PM Ken Rose

  Answers: 1: Yes, you can pull native files if you want. Processing time is much longer because the files need to partially open to plot. & 2: Yes, I send to PDF all the time. You will have the additional step of stating where you want the file saved. #3 (Bonus response). Check out my tip and video on using Batch Plot within Productstream here: http://mfgcommunity.autodesk.com/learning/tips/details/Batch_Plot_within_Productstream/