AutoCAD Plotting – Device not Found

Darin Green

Have you seen the following warning message when opening someone else’s drawings?

When you setup your drawings for plot, AutoCAD retains those setting within the
drawing file itself. Whether you have 1 or 50 drawings that you need to set the plot
device to “None” or change the plot device to another plotter altogether. Below you
will find step-by-step directions for batch converting these drawings to use a different
plot device.

Before we start, you will need Autodesk DWG TrueView installed. I recommend
getting the latest version using the following link:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=6703438&siteID=123112

Autodesk DWG TrueView is not only for viewing AutoCAD drawings, but you can also
perform some timesaving changes that most people are unaware of such as the
following:
• Check and Fix errors
• Bind external references
• Set default plotter to ‘none’
• Purge drawings
• Replace page setups
• Convert file version
• Pack and Go to a zip or exe

www.synergis.com
 AutoCAD Plotting – Device not Found

Open Autodesk DWG Trueview. Within the application menu, select “DWG Convert”.

The DWG Convert dialog box is displayed,

At this point, I recommend creating setups for future use such as...
 AutoCAD Plotting – Device not Found
Now, we need to create a new setup for setting the plot device to none.
Click the “Conversion Setups…” button

In the conversion Setups dialog box, click the “New” button

In the New Conversion Setup dialog box, give your new setup a name and click
“Continue”
 AutoCAD Plotting – Device not Found
The following dialog box is where all the magic happens…

First, make sure the Conversion package type is set to “in-place (overwrite files)”.
Also, note the File Format is currently set to AutoCAD 2013. There’s currently no
options for leaving the existing file version alone, so be sure to select the file format
you want these files to be saved as.

Secondly, under “Actions” check the “Set default plotter to ‘none’” and/or check
“Replace page setups” and browse to an existing drawing where you have your
standard page setups.

Last but not lease, click the Ok button.

 AutoCAD Plotting – Device not Found
Now that we have setup for changing the plot device to none, we can use it whenever
we need to without changing those settings every time we need to perform this task.

Back on the main page, select our newly created setup “Plot Settings” and click the
“Add file” button.

After you load all of the drawings that need to be changed, click the “Convert”
button.