Scale Lineweights

Scale Lineweights
AutoCAD offers the option to assign lineweights to objects either by their layer assignments or by
directly assigning a lineweight to individual objects. The lineweight option, however, doesn’t have any
meaning until you specify a scale for your drawing. After you specify a scale, the Scale Lineweights
option is available. Select this check box if you want the lineweight assigned to layers and objects to
appear correctly in your plots. You’ll get a closer look at lineweights and plotting later in this chapter.

Shaded Viewport Options
Most of your plotting will probably involve 2D technical line drawings, but occasionally you may
need to plot a shaded or rendered 3D view. You may need to include such 3D views combined with
2D or 3D Wireframe views. AutoCAD offers Shaded Viewport Options that enable you to plot
shaded or rendered 3D views of your AutoCAD drawing. These options give you control over the
quality of your rendered output. (LT users don’t have the Shaded Viewport Options.)
TIP
Remember that you need to click the More Options button in the lower-right corner of the
Plot dialog box to get to the Shaded Viewport Options group. The More Options button looks like
a circle with a greater-than sign. You also need to select a printer name in the Printer/Plotter
group before these options are made available.
Shade Plot
The Shade Plot drop-down list lets you control how a Model Space view is plotted. You can choose
from the following options:
As Displayed
plots the Model Space view as it appears on your screen.
Wireframe
plots the Model Space view of a 3D object as a wireframe view.
Hidden
plots your Model Space view with hidden lines removed.
3D Hidden/3D Wireframe/Conceptual/Realistic
plots the Model Space using one of these
visual styles. These selections override the current Model Space visual style. See Chapter 20 for
more on visual styles.
Rendered
renders your Model Space view before plotting (see Chapter 22 for more on rendered
views).
Draft/Low/Medium/High/Presentation
sets the quality of the plot.
The Shade Plot options aren’t available if you’re plotting from a Layout tab. You can control the
way each layout viewport is plotted through the viewport’s Properties settings. You’ll learn more
about layout viewport properties later in this chapter.