Patrick Albert C. Sayo sends us a tip to save printing time and costs for AutoCAD files. "This tip is for those who use xrefs for title blocks. Our company logo is a big block of black ink. We print it up to five times for checking and cross checking – a lot of ink is wasted. "For companies who apply xrefs for their title blocks, they can set Fillmode to 0 in the xref title block file while the project is still ongoing/in-process. Nobody will mind if they see a hollow logo, for it’s the drawing itself that they will be checking. But before sending it to the client they must set it back to 1 to revert the title block. By helping the company to save resources in every way possible, even in little ways, it might also help you in turn. In fact, I proposed this on my panel interview and I think that it was one of the factors that helped me gain the promotion that I yearned for. Who knows, it might work for you. Try it. Remember, every modest, little step when added up becomes one big success. "Advantages: · Slightly faster printing time. · Lesser ink consumption (saves 30% on each individual print in A3, and up to 16x as much when plotting in a0). · Fewer ink replacements. · Less stress on plotter print heads. · Ultimately reduces costs." Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: Fillmode not only reduces ink costs and printing time, but it can reduce processing time while you work in your drawing file. It turns off fills, meaning that thick polylines will only have their outlines displayed. Hatch patterns will not be displayed and neither will 2D solids. Since your computer won’t have to process these fills, performance is increased. Just make sure you turn it back on when you need your solids to show. |
