Continue to Site

Welcome to MCAD Central

Join our MCAD Central community forums, the largest resource for MCAD (Mechanical Computer-Aided Design) professionals, including files, forums, jobs, articles, calendar, and more.

PLT plot files

Uni Phil

New member
I been asked to open some drawings in PLT format which is an AutoCAD plotting format, have been told I might need a plug-in support, as I can't seem to open it.



I've looked on the net for a plug-in but cant find anything.



Any help as to how I can open these files would be great.



Thanks people.
 
Tried the help file from Autocad? Some useful information there! Search the index of the help file for PLT, it should be there. Otherwise your Autocad maybe is outdated ??



Wouter
 
I'm actually using WF not AutoCAD. I have access to AutoCAD LT at university as well, but have been told that there might be a plug-in for Pro/E for PLT files
 
From AutoCad, 'PLT' is default extension it give to plot file.

Contents will be depend upon what device it was created for.



If it was created for HP plotter it will be in HPGL format, if it was created for HP printer it will be in either Postscript or PCL format.



Charles
 
Depending on what kind of plotter you were plotting to, the .plt file could be HPGL, PCL, CGM, Postscript or a few other languages. There are many different file viewers available but you are not going to be able to open any plot files in Pro/E (or AutoCAD either). I prefer to use the generic postscript device driver in Pro/E and view the files with Ghostscript (free). You can also use Ghostscript to convert the plot files to PDF format.



You can open your plot files with a text editor to help determine what kind of file it is. A postscript file will start with a string something like this:



%!PS-Adobe-2.0



An HPGL file will start with a bunch of special control characters and then a string like:



IN;IP-8880,-5940,7920,5940;SC;LT;
 

Sponsor

Articles From 3DCAD World

Back
Top