Plotting With Survey Chief 4.1/5.x

To print a to-scale plot on your plotter or printer from Survey Chief follow these basic steps. There are many more options which may be used once you have mastered the basic steps.

Before beginning the process, you must have a printer or plotter installed in Windows. There are no additional steps required to install the printer in Survey Chief.

With a drawing displayed on screen select View Plot Layout from the menu or press the button. This displays the Plot Options dialog.

In the Plot Options dialog, select the scale at which you wish to plot. For example, to plot at a scale of 1"=30', select 30.

Press the Window button in the Plot Options dialog. This will display a black border on top of the drawing on screen, showing how big an area will fit on the currently selected paper size at the current scale. By default, this window is placed with the lower left corner at the center of the drawing window. If you have selected a large value for the scale, you may not see the entire box, because the right and top sides may be outside the window.

When you pressed the Window button in the previous step, the focus was automatically transferred to the Plot window. You can now use the arrow keys to position the plot border on screen, or you can use your mouse and press the button. You can also position the plot border by dragging it with the mouse. Move the mouse over the plot border and the mouse cursor will change to a hand. Press the left mouse button to grab the border and drag it to a new position.

You can also rotate the plot border. If using the keyboard, type Ctrl+L or Ctrl+R in the plot window to rotate the border to the left or right respectively. If using the mouse, the left and right portions of the button will rotate the border.

If you can not fit the area you wish to plot within the border, change the scale in the Plot Options dialog and press the Window button again to select a new scale. The size of the border displayed on screen will be adjusted. Optionally, you can press the Printer button in the Plot Options dialog to change paper sizes. In the Print Setup dialog displayed, press the Properties button. This will display device specific options for your printer, possibly allowing you to select different paper sizes or orientations. After changing paper size or orientation in the Printer Setup dialog, press the Window button again to update the border displayed on screen to reflect the changes you made.

When you have positioned the border over the area you wish to plot and are ready, press the Plot button in the Print Options dialog. This will send the plotting to the printer.

Some other options to experiment with include the addition of a title block to the drawing which can include a number of options including a bar scale, drawing title, filename, date, and company information.