Best Practices: Printing

Learn best practices for printing views or sheets.

Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+P.
To print to PDF, see About Printing to PDF and Print to PDF.
To generate DWF or DWFx files, click File tab Export (DWF). See About Exporting to DWF Format.
To print many views and sheets unattended, use the Batch Print add-in.
To print drawings to scale with a title block, do the following: create a sheet, specify a title block to use, and add views to the sheet. For each view on the sheet, you can change its view scale using its view properties. You can include multiple views at different scales on the same sheet. See Sheets.

Improving performance when printing

To improve performance and stability when printing views and sheets, do the following before you start a print job:

Make sure that you have installed the most recent version of the printer driver. Consult with the printer manufacturer.
If shadows are not needed for the views to be printed, turn off shadows. See Display Sun and Shadows.
Unload all links that are not necessary for a particular view that is being printed. This strategy should reduce the memory resources required to open the file. See Unload and Reload Linked Models.
To increase the print speed of elevation views, section views, and perspective views, use the Far Clipping property for these views. See Cut by the Far Clip Plane.
Vector printing is usually faster than raster printing. Use vector processing if possible. See About Vector Processing and Raster Processing.
If you are working on a workshared file and experience issues printing, ask the users who need to print to detach their local copies and work locally. This strategy conserves network resources and reduces communications between local files and central files.
Do not open other applications while printing.
If the print job is of substantial size, the status bar displays a Cancel button. The file size necessary to trigger this option depends on system speed and amount of memory.