If you develop landscape plans using gCADPlus and wish to create PDF files from the CAD design, two different methods are available:
- Use the SaveAsPDF command.
- Printing to a ‘phantom’ PDF printer.
The first option is inbuilt. To use it, simply choose File>Save As PDF as shown in the figure below.
The second choice involves installing and using software called a PDFWriter. This creates a ‘phantom’ printer, and even though no physical printer is attached to the computer, you can print your design to the printer and generate the required PDF file.
Tip: The PDFSave command was initially developed for gCADPlus users using Macs because no PDF writers were available early in the development of gCADPlus.
Tip: There are quite several PDF writers available for Windows users, and most are free. Examples include our favourite CutePDF and others, such as Bullzip.
Tip: At least one PDFWriter is now available for the Mac. We recommend one called PDFWriter and have downloaded it here.
Print using PDFSave
The advantages of using PDFSave are:
- It is fast.
- It is simple to choose the desired resolution in the output.
- Importantly, if you have used transparency fill in the design, the fill prints correctly
The disadvantages of using PDFSave are:
- It is not possible to print very high-resolution PDF files.
- It is not possible to accurately print a design to a fixed scale
Print to a PDFWriter
The advantages of printing to a PDFWriter are:
- Designs can be printed to very high resolution.
- Printing an accurately scaled version of a design is possible.
The disadvantages of using a PDFWriter are:
- It is not possible to print entities with transparent fills. The plot often hangs the computer!
- PDF Writers are somewhat tricky to set up, especially when setting the resolution.
- Very slow to generate the plot.