About Directly Plotting 3D Views

While using the Standard application (Part or Assembly), use the Quick Drawing command (File > Print > Quick Drawing) to directly plot views for the active model, without manually creating a drawing.

By specifying one of the following layouts and a printer configuration file, you can create the plot:

• Projection Layout—Selects the projection layout based on a named view.

• Manual Layout—Specifies the number of views per sheet, named views and a scale for each named view, and a display style for each view.

• Drawing Template—Uses a template to define all aspects of the layout, except for the printer configuration.

The plot reflects the layer settings, simplified representation state, explode state, and zone clipping for the current model, and appears as if a drawing were created and plotted. The file used to create the plot is automatically erased from your Creo Parametric session.

• In Part, Quick Drawing is not available for simplified representations.

• In Assemby, Quick Drawing is available for geometry and graphics representations but not for symbolic representations.

Use the following configuration options when you set up for direct plotting:

• quick_print_plotter_config_file—Specifies the path for the default plotter configuration file (.pcf) when using the Quick Drawing command.

If plotter is set to ms_print_mgr, no other options are necessary. If it isn't set to ms_print_mgr, adding to the plotter configuration file the values for plot_file_dir and plotter_command is recommended.

If you do not set quick_print_plotter_config_file, it defaults to <Pro/E loadpoint>/text/plot_config/ms_print_mgr.pcf on Windows.

The .pcf defined in the Quick Drawing dialog box overrides the configuration option setting.

• quick_print_drawing_template—Specifies the path for the default drawing template file when using the Quick Drawing command with Drawing Template selected as your View Layout definition.

Some settings in the Quick Drawing dialog box may conflict with settings in the plotter configuration file. For example, plotter configuration file settings for plot_access and allow_file_naming may be overwritten by settings in Quick Drawing.

Some settings in the plotter configuration file are ignored by Quick Drawing because they do not apply to Quick Drawing. Settings in the plotter configuration file that are ignored by Quick Drawing include paper_size and paper_size_allowed. Plotter configuration options that work with Quick Drawing include plot_label, plot_sheets, plot_file_dir, and plot_segmented.