Plot Stamp Helps Index Drawings and Plots

You may have experienced this problem: After finishing a set of drawings in CAD, you plot them on paper for other people to review. When they have some changes or corrections, you then have to find the original drawing file on your computer and make the requested modifications. As a CAD designer, you may have thousands of drawing files stored with different file paths on your computer. You may find that searching for them is a painful waste of your precious time. Searching for files should be a trivial task!

I have found that ZWCAD's Plot Stamp command is really very useful for such requirements. A “plot stamp” is one or two lines of text added to the edge of the plot. Information included with the text can be the drawing's file name, the name of the layout, and the date and time. With this information on the printed plot, you can quickly find the original drawings on your computer. This command is especially helpful for big projects with large numbers of drawings, or where many designers take part, or even when strict checking procedures must be applied.

The PlotStamp command is new to ZWCAD 2009i; despite being a new feature, it worked perfectly in my experience. It operates very well compared to a similar feature in AutoCAD.

Besides applying the drawing/layout names, dates and times that I mentioned above, you can choose from other flexible stamp fields, such as device name, paper size, plot scale, and login name. In addition, you can even define your own fields with the “Add/Edit” option.

Furthermore, ZWCAD's plot stamp provides advanced options. These allow you to specify the location and offset of the plot stamp on the printout. Even the font type and size of the text are under your control.

Actually I am very a precise drafter, and so I like to specify every tiny aspect. Each time I plot a drawing, I specified settings that show off my own style.

But then one day one of my coworkers asked me why I just didn’t load the plot stamp settings file. I discovered that all of the plot stamp settings can be saved as PSS files. Whenever I need to plot a drawing, I just need to load the PSS file, which specifies all plot stamp settings automatically.

ZWCAD's plot stamp function helps me to easily sort my plotted files, and to conveniently locate the original drawings. I don’t know if other CAD software users have noticed this little tool; if not, then you will find it very helpful in your CAD