The 2016 version of AutoCAD saw some major enhancements in the PDF feature. Select All layouts option from this drop down menu if you want to plot all layouts of current drawing into a single PDF file. When you use this command in layout view you will find an additional Export field with the current layout and all layouts options. The PDF settings can be changed as per your requirement using Options button, I have discussed the PDF options settings in next section of the article. You can customize this preset using options button of Current settings panel as shown in the image below. Select the preset from PDF Preset drop-down menu. Type EPDF on the command line and press enter to start the export PDF command. You can also get high resolution images from AutoCAD by configuring custom plotter. You can also select Publish to web JPG.pc3, Publish to web PNG.pc3 or TIFF plotters to get output in image formats. If you are using AutoCAD 2016 then you can also select other PDF plotters with some predefined settings like AutoCAD PDF (General documentation).pc3 which has a resolution of 1200 dpi and AutoCAD PDF (High Quality print).pc3 which has a resolution of 2400 dpi. Select DWG to PDF.pc3 plotter from the list of plotters. To plot a drawing to PDF press CTRL+P on keyboard or type PLOT on the command line and press enter, this will open plot window in AutoCAD.

In this article, I will show you some basic methods with which you can get output in PDF format from your AutoCAD drawing with many different settings. The quality of output can also be controlled using settings of PDF plotters. If a drawing contains multiple layouts then you can choose to get the PDF output as a single document with layouts in its sheets or you can plot them separately as well.

A drawing exported in PDF format can preserve layer data, custom font styles, and other properties. One of the most popular output formats of AutoCAD drawing is Portable Document Format or PDF.

Export cad to pdf