Helpful Settings for Plotting 3D Solids in AutoCAD

https://autocadtips.wordpress.com/2014/06/19/helpful-settings-for-plotting-3d-solids-in-autocad/

This post isn’t a fix-all solution but it has helped printing/plotting issues that I’ve recently encountered. There
are some helpful AutoCAD variables and an adjustment to your preferred “Visual style(s)” that can help make
printing 3D solids look correct in your print.

First – The issue that we encountered was that intersecting solids didn’t have a clear intersection in the print and
curved 3D objects were displaying lines where a “tessellation” of the curves would be.

The settings of the visual styles for a

viewport can be confusing. Note that there is
a difference of a “Visual Style” and “Shade
Plot” setting. This “trips me up” a lot and I
confuse them for each other…

For the purposes of this blog post, I will keep

it simple and keep the visual style of the
Viewport set to “2D Wireframe” (shown
below).
 • Then change the “Shade Plot” setting of the viewport by selecting the edge of the viewport from paper
space and opening the “Properties” palette. (right-click > Properties)
• Change “Shade Plot” from “As Displayed” to “Hidden”

Change the Visual Style to not display the “Isolines”

Use the command VISUALSTYLES in the command line to
open the Visual Styles palette.

1. Select the Visual Style that you wish to change in the

upper section of the palette. In this example, I changed
the “Hidden” Visual Style.
2. Scroll down in the palette to the “Edge Settings”
section, Change the property called “Show” from
“Facet Edges” to “Isolines“
3. Change the “Number of Lines” setting from “20” to
“0” (zero).
In addition to making this change to the Vistual Style, changing the following AutoCAD variables helps the plot
to display correctly.

The result is shown below. Hopefully you find this useful.