Automated plotting in AutoCAD
Overview
Visual aids are important for developing a user-friendly design manual. The design team has manually created AutoCAD images to help users understand the plant designs. One major problem of this task, however, is that the developers need to regenerate the AutoCAD plots when they change a design of a single object in the system.
The major goal of this project is to automate the process of creating professional layout sheets in AutoCAD. The generated sheets will include not only drawings but also the dimensions and zoom scales of the models and the comments by the developers. Furthermore, the final layouts will be plotted into either JPEG or PNG files. The automation is based on AutoCAD features such as layout, dimensions, plots, and etc. More details of the used AutoCAD commands are shown in the next section. MtoATranslator program is updated with new AutoCAD commands. The other AutoCAD design scripts will be renewed according to the updated MtoATranslator.
Important AutoCAD Commands
Below is the list of the AutoCAD commands required for creating professional layout sheets.
More features will be added as they are debugged.
Achievements
Some of the commands above – layout, shademode, viewports layer, model space, and paper space – are debugged and added in the MtoATranslator. The processes of creating of layout sheets, setting shademodes, and switching between model/paper spaces are automated.
Future Goals
As this project is in the beginning stage, there will be many challenges to confront.
<Final Example, drawn by Gonzalo Caprario, will be linked>
1. The MtoATranslator should be constantly updated as new commands for paper space and plot are found.
2. A method for putting more than one viewport in one layout sheet should be fuond.
3. The commands that add and edit texts in AutoCAD will be added in MtoATranslator.
4. The dimension commands will be debugged. This task requires careful calculation to estimate the location of the dimension texts.
5. Following the dimension, the texts will be added.
6. The styles for dimensions and texts will be automatically set.