How to: create DWF/PDF automatically when you save AutoCAD drawing

January 8, 2013 by Edwin Prakoso 

© Alfonso de Tomás – Fotolia.com
Do you need to create DWF or PDF for your drawing to share it with your coworkers? Sometimes you have to do this because not everyone have access to AutoCAD. Of course, you can ask them to install DWG TrueView, free DWG viewer from Autodesk. But not everyone want to install it, especially if they don’t have a good hardware.
PDF probably is a better choice if you often share your drawing with non CAD users. Almost everybody today has PDF reader installed in their computer. And you can open DWFx by using Internet Explorer 7 or later (doesn’t work with other internet browser, only IE. Try this link to open a sample DWFx)

Auto Publish

AutoCAD offers automatic publish to DWF or PDF. You can choose it to create DWF/PDF automatically when you save your file. When you share your drawing on a shared location, you can be sure if the PDF is also updated. No need to worry that you forget to update it!
To enable Auto publish, open AutoCAD options. In ‘Plot and Publish’ tab, you can enable Automatic Publish on the bottom left of the dialog.

Auto Publish options

If you click ‘Automatic Publish Settings…’ you can change some options, so it will suit your needs.



First, Publish On. You can choose to auto publish every time you save the drawing or when you close it. Or let AutoCAD to ask you first. Publish when close is more relevant. Because we often save drawings even we haven’t finished it yet. We don’t want people to see unfinished drawings, aren’t we?
You can set the save location, what to save (model and/or layouts) and file format.

Let the others see your drawings!

This is a nice option to have, if we work with many non CAD users. It’s tedious to update the PDF/DWF every time we make changes. And we often forget to do it, so people may see old drawings instead of the last version.