How to Batch Drawings in Autocad

Documentation

Installing

Run the installer downloaded from Autodesk App Store or from this site. You may need to restart AutoCAD to activate the app.

Uninstalling

To uninstall: On Windows 11 and 10 version 1703 or later press Windows+I on the keyboard to access Settings or click or right-click the Windows Start button and then select Settings. Click on Apps (optionally followed by Apps & features). On older Window versions click Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features or Control Panel > Add.

License Activation

See activation instructions here:JTB World Apps Licensing.Before activated, the app will run for 30 days with limitations on numbers of drawings processed.

Usage

Before running the application's main command, please make sure you have saved your work: AutoCAD may be restarted during the batch publishing operation, which would cause any unsaved drawing edits to be lost.

The JTBWBATCHPUBLISH command launches the main application dialog. From here you must specify the source directory or drawings to publish, as well as the targets: DWF and/or PDF (PDF is only available from AutoCAD 2010). For each chosen target an appropriate destination directory must be specified. These settings will be remembered when the JTBWBATCHPUBLISH command is used again.

From this dialog it's possible to change further configuration settings. The "Configure" button brings up a dialog allowing you to specify whether to publish DWG and/or DXF files, as well as specifying a timeout delay, after which the application will decide that AutoCAD needs to be restarted during the batch publish. If AutoCAD is restarted, the batch publish process should continue from after the "failed" drawing.

It is possible to configure individual drawings, specifying whether to publish individual layouts or not. It is possible to ignore all the model-space sheets of the included drawings.

You can also choose to publish only drawings that have been modified since they were last published, streamlining regular publishing operations.

After the configuration dialog has been dismissed with the "Done" button, "Publish" will launch the operation itself.

At this point two dialogs will be launched (as well as any dialogs AutoCAD needs during individual publish operations). The first is a status dialog, showing the list of drawings found in the source folder and their individual publishing status. The second dialog is an external "regulator" application, which monitors AutoCAD's status and restarts if it takes longer to publish a drawing than the specified timeout.

Once completed it's possible to use the status dialog to "Retry" the publishing process on any failed drawings. Otherwise the dialog can simply be closed with "Done": a log file will be found in each of the target folders describing the results of the batch publish.

Tips & Tricks

If you receive "Error(s) Did Not Plot" for some jobs showing in Plot and Publish Details dialog box and maybe with the "ERROR: There were no plottable sheets in the current operation" try this. Open the drawing in question and then on the layout or model with the problem run PLOT command and then close the dialog box and save and close the drawing. You can also run the PUBLISH command and you will notice the status "Layout not initialized" on the problematic model or layout to verify that this is the problem.

If this problem is on many drawings there are ways to fix this in batch mode with for example JTB SmartBatch. Typically the problem is in the model.

Create a file named for example FIX.LSP with Notepad and include the two rows in italic below. The name FIX is just and example but the extension LSP must be used. This will make sure the model is activated and that the plot command is run once without actually plotting anything.
(setvar "TILEMODE" 1)
(command "._-plot" "_no" "" "" "None")

Then include this LSP to be run on the drawings with SmartPurger.

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Source: https://jtbworld.com/batch-publish-for-autocad

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