Plotting and Printing
Put a drawing on paper — sheet size, drawing scale, the title block, and what the plotted sheet includes that the screen does not.
A finished drawing usually has to leave as a sheet: a PDF to send, or paper to work from. Pingendum builds that sheet for you — frame, title block, scaled geometry — from the drawing you already have.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, ensure that:
- You have a drawing you want on paper. Setting up layers first is worth it, since layers decide what reaches the sheet.
Sheet Setup
File → Sheet and title block… opens the setup dialog. It's also the first step of a PDF export, so you rarely need to visit it separately.
Paper and scale
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Paper | A4, A3, A2, A1, A0, Letter, Tabloid |
| Scale | Fit to sheet, or a fixed scale from the standard series |
Fit to sheet sizes the drawing to the paper and then snaps to the nearest standard scale — you get 1:2 or 1:5, never 1:3.21. A drawing is normally read at a scale someone can reason about, so Pingendum won't invent one.
Pick a fixed scale instead when the sheet has to match a series, or when several sheets need to agree.
Note: orientation follows ISO 5457
A4 is used portrait; A0 through A3 are used landscape. Pingendum applies this to whatever you choose, so a conforming sheet is what you get by default.
What to include
Three checkboxes decide what's drawn:
| Include | Default |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | On |
| Text notes | On |
| Construction geometry | Off |
Construction geometry is off by default because it's a drafting aid, not drawing content. Turn it on when the sheet is for you rather than for a workshop.
The title block
Eight ISO 7200 fields: Title, Company, Drawing no., Revision, Sheet, Document type, Drawn by and Approved by.
Fill in what applies. Only populated fields are drawn, so a mostly-empty block prints as a clean title rather than as a grid of empty boxes. The date prints as today's unless you set one.
What Reaches the Paper
The sheet is not simply a screenshot, and two rules explain most of the differences.
Layers decide what's on it. Hidden, frozen, and Include in print/PDF-off objects are absent from the sheet. Every line that is printed carries its effective colour, linetype and lineweight from the drawing.
Geometry scales; annotation doesn't. The sheet has two coordinate systems: geometry is scaled by the drawing scale, while the frame, the title block, dimension text and line widths are fixed in paper millimetres. So dimension text stays the same physical size on paper whether you plot at 1:1 or 1:20 — which is what makes a sheet readable at any scale.
Lineweight becomes real. On screen, lineweight is an approximation. On paper it's the actual millimetre value, so a 0.5 mm line measures 0.5 mm.
Note: very light colours are plotted black
A colour that would be nearly invisible on white paper is printed black instead. Every CAD package does this, and it means a drawing set up for a dark screen still plots legibly without recolouring it first.
Exporting a PDF
File → Export PDF sheet… (Ctrl+Shift+E).
The sheet setup dialog opens first so you can confirm paper, scale and title block, then you choose where to write the file. The extension is added if you leave it off.
Printing
File → Print… (Ctrl+P).
Printing opens a print preview rather than going straight to the printer, because the sheet scales the drawing to fit whatever paper is chosen and you should see the result before spending any. Paper, orientation and printer are all changeable inside the preview, and the sheet re-renders for each change.
When the preview looks right, print from within it.
Tip
The preview is also the quickest way to check a sheet you're about to export as PDF — same renderer, same rules, no file written.
Next Steps
You now know how to:
- Choose paper and scale, and why Fit to sheet lands on a standard ratio
- Fill in a title block that prints cleanly when it's only half filled
- Predict what layers keep off the sheet
- Understand why dimension text doesn't shrink when the scale does
- Export a PDF sheet and print through the preview
That completes the drawing's journey from a blank grid to a sheet someone else can work from. For a one-page summary of every shortcut, see the Keyboard Shortcuts Reference.