DraftSight is a 2D and 3D CAD solution for architects, engineers, designers, and hobbyists. It includes design and annotation tools and an API for automating tasks. Here we discuss an oft-needed technique for printing multiple sheets to PDF, specifically generating PDF output from a multi-sheet DraftSight drawing to:
- A single PDF document with one sheet per page, or
- Multiple PDF documents, each of one sheet only
Before commencing printing to PDF, these steps will require that a print configuration, set to print to the built-in PDF printer, be made available. See this article, for how to create that.
DraftSight Print settings for PDF
Printing Multiple Sheets to PDF
- ensure that one of the Sheet tabs is active. At the time this article was written, having the Model tab active will prevent us from selecting all sheets to be included in the output
- Print > Print configuration options > Print configuration > Select a print configuration
- Printer/Plotter: ensure that PDF is the selected printer. The print configuration makes this setting and can be edited as needed. See our How to Set Up DraftSight Print Configurations article for how to do that.
- Multiple Sheets > Select Sheets… (this button is greyed out if we neglected to activate one of the Sheet tabs)
DraftSight sheet settings - in the Select Sheets dialogue window, set the Print configuration for each sheet
- enable “Select all” to include all sheets in the PDF output
- enabling “Create a single PDF document with one sheet per page” does exactly that, while leaving this option disabled produces a set of single-sheet PDFs
- choose OK in Select Sheets
- choose OK in Print
- browse to the desired output folder, enter a filename, and click Save
More DraftSight Tips
For more DraftSight tips and tricks, check out our live online DraftSight Essentials training course.
There is a DraftSight certification exam to test your skills and earn a certificate that proves that you can use the tools efficiently. How to get DraftSight Certification (javelin-tech.com)
