Plotting Out Consultant Sheets

A few rules I like to follow when plotting out consultant sheets are as follows: 1) Plot out pdf's in color when layed out in Plotmaker/Layout Book (so that line weights come through) and 2) Plot out plt's from plotflow (open directly with plotflow by right clicking and use "open with" - MAC and PC have this option - this option alone saves you time from having to lay it out in your layout book, so if you can ask your consultants to send you plt's along with the pdf's, do so)

Note: These rules of course are settings used based on a particular HP DesignJet Plotter... so it may work differently on other brands and/or models.

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/svofski/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Plotmaker 9 File Does Not Open

Now, in a case where you simply cannot open an .lbk file for whatever reason, it does not mean that you have completely lost everything. You will however need to spend a little time recovering your plotmaker file. Two things to do before you undergo this process, are:

1. Restart you computer and see if that helped
2. Try opening your "PlotMaker Layout Book Backup File" (a duplicate of your main plotmaker file)

So if none of the two methods mentioned above works, use this as your last resort:
start a new/blank layout book and import views from your corrupted .lbk file using the import command. You may have to re-link view sets to the corresponding .pln file but its better than nothing and starting from scratch.

Export To DWG From ArchiCAD

I will probably add more info on this topic in the future but for now I would like to record and share with you a recent experience that could end up saving you some valuable time when exporting your ArchiCAD drawings to DWG format. I recently had to coordinate some drawings with a consultant that used AutoCAD. Taking note of what AutoCAD version they are using is very important because you will have several options to export your drawings from ArchiCAD. Once this is all settled on your export preferences... make sure that your current view that you are about to export to DWG has all layers "unlocked". You have to make sure that none of your layers are locked as this may be a serious issue for AutoCAD users on their end and may result in a lot of unnecessary back and forth email exchanges.

Problems Generating ArchiCAD Elevations

I have ran into a few circumstances where my exterior elevations do not want to generate or rebuild... for this problem I have used a simple procedure which works 99% of the time:

• slightly slide the marker cutline
• if you have shadows turned on, adjust the sun settings by a bit
• do a combination of method 1 and 2
• rebuild elevation from model and it should work

Home this helps.