Having issue with AutoCAD freezing when you try to plot a layout. The plot dialog window doesn't show up at all and keeps loading

[ThatITyoungGuy]

Hi there,

Just want to share my discovery to the world as I spent quite some time to resolve this issue that one of our end-user had. It is quite specific but this post might still appear like an enlightenment.
Basically, you need to make sure of the printer defined in the page setup linked to your layout. This user had created hundred of layout for different projects and had eachtime created a specific page setup. In each one of these setups, he had specified the printer to use, which was a network printer.

At the time, we had an old print server which was later migrated and decommissioned. Obviously the user had set the defaut printer of each page setup to be \\[oldprintserver]\[ploter1], which caused the plot dialog box to freeze when hitting "Print". (For whatever reason, it tries to contact the printer specified in the page setup when opening the dialog window and it will NEVER time out).

Also, a workaround was found during my research. If you don't want to mess up with these configs, you can use the command "EXPORTPDF" to get a pdf file of your layout, which can later on be printed through Adobe Acrobat or Chrome. And this command ignore the default printer specified for this layout.

I hope this helped you just a tiny bit for your troubleshooting.
Yeah and I don't mind if this seemed kinda crystal clear, I just got into AutoCAD support at my job and some people might be in the same case.

Best regards,

[tombu]

Unlike printing from most software like word processors AutoCAD plotting requires devices capable of plotting specific sizes and scales usually meaning we often need different devices for different projects. Having all these settings saved for each layout keeps things simple but anytime a print device is either replaced or not working we're reminded what it'd be like if those settings weren't saved. 

[BIGAL]

You have multiple layouts so 1st question are the title blocks all the same size ? Are they all landscape ? 

 

First answer can use lisp to plot all layouts to pdf even join them back into 1 pdf, yes have code.

 

Second question are you using the same title block for a landscape or portrait title block but at different scales ?

 

Second answer yes have code. But for two known name title blocks. 

 

In both answers ignore page setup rather do a custom plot setting all the correct parameters including plotter name on network or not. Worked in multi story building, a user hit a Plot button the code looked at their user name and set output to the printer near them. 

 Example code plots a A1 sheet to a A3 pdf.

(COMMAND "-PLOT"  "Y"  "" "Plot To PDF"
	       "Iso full bleed A3 (420.00 x 297.00 MM)" "m" "LANDSCAPE"  "N"   "W"  "-6,-6" "807,560" "1=2"  "C"
	       "y" "Acad.ctb" "Y"	"n" "n" "n" pdfName "N" "y"
    )

 

[Rude.Mean.Square]

I just ran into this exact issue. The company I work for upgraded there servers about a week ago.  I can't say that I've found/heard of any fixes yet. Workarounds yes, but something that will fix the thousands of layouts on my company's server, no. The issue only really affects me. I'm the one that set up my department's drawing template files for my company 5 years ago, so the page setups were only really convenient for me. Removing the old printer from my computer and deleting the .pc3 file has at least stopped AutoCAD from locking up when I try to edit a page setup. 

For me printing from directly from AutoCAD yields a higher quality print than plotting to a file and printing from a different program. Publish to PDF is obnoxious and for some reason ignores page setups or at least parts of them. I'm sure there's cleaner ways, but to print directly from AutoCAD, the workaround I've been using is the same I use to batch plot to other network printers (locally and in our other facility). I use a named page setup. 

Named page setup:
Create a file (or do this in a master template file).
Create a layout with the page setup you want.

While in that layout, hit Plot.

Select your printer and adjust your various settings. 
When you're ready, go to the "Page setup" section at the top of that window and click "Add..."

Name your page setup and click "OK".
You can then "Cancel" out of the Plot window.

Save your drawing.
Create more layouts with named page setups as needed.

When you go to Publish, you need your sheet with your named page setup (let's call it "master sheet") to be in your list of sheets.
The master sheet doesn't need to be at the top of the sheet list, but it does need to be moved above all of the sheets that you want to use it's named page setup.

Highlight the master sheet.

Shift+left-click or ctrl+left-click to also highlight the sheets below that you want to use your master sheet's named page setup.

Click the cell in the "Page Setup" column of your master sheet.

From that dropdown select your named page setup.

Repeat if you have multiple named page setups that you want to use.

Once all of the sheets in your list have been assigned their named page setups, you can remove the master sheet(s) from the list.

Then hit Publish.

 

[BIGAL]

There are lisps out there that will say plot all layouts but my version is restricted to current dwg. You just use the correct lisp to suit the plotter destination. eg A1 large format, A3 BW & Color. I had problems with publish doing weird things on a big multi dwg plot. Just a comment worked in a multi Storey building so would look at username and send to closest printer to them all done without user input just pick size.