PLOT

PLOT prints your drawing, on paper or into a PDF file. In CAD, printing is called plotting. You choose the sheet, which part of the drawing to print, and at what scale, then send it.

How it works

Type PLOT, or PRINT, and press Enter. Ctrl+P does the same. The Plot window opens and the command ends.

1. Choose a Printer/plotter: PDF File… or one of your printers.
2. Choose the Paper size and Orientation.
3. Choose the Plot area and the Scale.
4. Click Preview… to check the page.
5. Click Plot. For a PDF, Musa CAD asks where to save the file.

Command line

Command: PLOT
(click Plot, then choose a name for the PDF)
Plotted to PDF: /home/you/drawings/bracket.pdf

When you plot to a printer, Musa CAD says Sent to printer: and the printer’s name instead.

The Plot window

Part	What it does
Printer/plotter	PDF File… writes a PDF. The other entries are the printers installed on your computer.
Paper size	ISO A4, ISO A3, ISO A2, ISO A1, ISO A0, ANSI A (Letter) or ANSI B (Tabloid).
Orientation	Landscape or Portrait. Musa CAD picks the one that suits the drawing’s shape when the window opens.
Plot area	Which part of the drawing to plot. Display is what you see on screen now. Extents is everything in the drawing. Window is a rectangle you choose.
Pick Window <	Closes the window so you can drag a rectangle in the drawing. The Plot window then comes back with Window chosen. Press Esc to come back without changing anything.
Fit to paper	Scales the plot area so it fills the sheet. Quick, but not to any scale. Untick it to set a scale.
Scale	How many millimetres (or inches) on paper equal how many drawing units. 1 mm = 5 units plots at 1:5. Musa CAD switches to inches for the ANSI sheets.
Center the plot	Puts the plot in the middle of the sheet.
Offset	With Center the plot unticked, the plot starts at the top-left corner of the sheet, moved right by X and down by Y.
Plot object lineweights	Ticked, each line plots at its lineweight in millimetres on the paper, whatever the scale. Unticked, every line plots as a thin hairline.
Plot style (CTB)	None plots the colours as they are. Monochrome (all black) plots everything black. Grayscale turns each colour into a shade of grey.
Copies	How many copies to print. It is used only for printers.
Page setup	Pick a saved page setup to fill in all these settings at once. Save As… saves the settings you have now under a name, kept in the drawing.
Preview…	Shows the page as it will come out.
Plot	Plots, and closes the window.
Cancel	Closes the window without plotting.

Preview

Preview… opens the Plot Preview window with a picture of the sheet. Zoom In, Zoom Out and Fit change how big it looks, and you can drag to move around. Close shuts it.

PREVIEW opens the same window from the command line, with the settings of your last plot.

Plotting to PDF

Choose PDF File… as the Printer/plotter and click Plot. Musa CAD asks for a file name in the Plot to PDF window and adds .pdf if you leave it off. The PDF is real vector output, not a picture, so it stays sharp when you zoom in.

To make a PDF without opening the Plot window, use EXPORTPDF. To put several layouts into one PDF, use PUBLISH. To plot from a script or a server, with no window at all, run musacad --plot; see The command line.

Plotting a layout

In a layout, PLOT starts from the layout’s own sheet: its paper size, the whole sheet as the plot area, at 1:1. Whatever the layout’s viewports show is plotted with it. Set up a layout’s paper with PAGESETUP.

Good to know

• Layers that are off or frozen are not plotted. Neither are layers with Plot unticked in LAYER.
• Lines that are white or nearly white plot black, so they show on white paper.
• The Plot window starts from the settings of your last plot, until you close Musa CAD. Save them as a page setup to keep them with the drawing.
• With Extents and an empty drawing, Musa CAD says Nothing to plot.
• If the chosen area is empty or off the drawing, Musa CAD says Plot: the chosen area was empty or off the drawing -- using Extents instead. and plots everything.
• Before each plot, Musa CAD prints a line that starts with [plot-spec] and lists the settings used. It helps if you ever need to report a plotting problem.
• If the plot does not look the way you expect, see A plot or PDF looks wrong.

Compared with AutoCAD

The Plot style (CTB) list has three built-in styles instead of CTB files that you load or edit. Like AutoCAD, Musa CAD sets the scale in inches for the ANSI sheets and in millimetres for the ISO ones.

Next

• Save named plot settings with PAGESETUP.
• Lay out sheets with title blocks and scaled viewports in Layouts, viewports and plotting.
• Plot from a script or a build server with The command line.