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 a piece of software termed a PDFWriter. This creates a ‘phantom’ printer and even though there is no physical printer attached to the computer, it is possible to 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 early in the development of gCADPlus, no PDFWriters were available.
Tip: There are quite a number of PDFWriters available for Windows users and most are free of cost. Examples include our favorite CutePDF and others such as Bullzip.
Tip: At least one PDFWriter is now available for the Mac. We recommend one called PDFWriter and 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 difficult to set up, especially when setting resolution.
- Very slow to generate the plot.