It has always been a pleasure to publish a guest post from someone in the community. It helps the guest author get more visibility among peers as well as shares some valuable knowledge with the readers of the Between the Lines blog, a win – win for everyone in my book.
This guest post is by Paul Munford (The CAD Setter Out). Paul is also the author of the CADAROO cartoon “Half CAD Tech, Half Ninja” featured on another great CAD blog Kung Fu Drafter by Curt Moreno. 
I’m a big fan of the new plot to PDF feature that came out with AutoCAD 2010. The PDF’s AutoCAD creates are small and include benefits such as searchable text and Layers…
But what if you don’t want to include your Layer table in your PDF plots?
How to turn off Layer export for DWG to PDF – Plotting
Turning off PDF layer plotting is pretty straightforward;
Open the plot dialogue, and select ‘DWG To PDF.pc3’ under Printer/Plotter.
In the Plotter Configuration dialogue select ‘Custom Properties’, and then click the ‘Custom Properties button.
Finally, uncheck ‘Include layer Information’ in the DWG To PDF Properties dialogue.
You will be prompted to save the changes in a temporary printer configuration file, or you can write over your existing DWG To PDF PC3 file.
This method will only turn off layer export for PDF’s that are created with AutoCAD’s plot command.
If you prefer to use AutoCAD’s ‘Export’ command to create your PDF’s, you can turn off layer export here too…
How to turn off Layer export for DWG to PDF – Exporting PDF’s
To turn off Layer export for AutoCAD’s ‘EXPORTPDF’ Command;
First click on the Export to DWF/PDF options button:
Output tab > Export to DWF/PDF Panel > Export to DWF/PDF Options
TIP: If you are using the Classic interface type ‘exportsettings’ at the command line, and choose ‘Options’.
Pick ‘Don’t include’ from the Layer Information settings drop down, to turn off layer export.
I hope that you found this quick tip useful! Take care.
Thank you Paul!
If you would like to submit a guest post please Email Me for details and consideration.
Cheers,
Shaan
Unfortunatelly, it doesn’t seem to always work right. I have several drawings (all in acad 2010). On some layer plotting works fine but on the others not a single layer information is plotted but frame layer (in case of printing layout).
There must be some other setting within layers that says this layer is to be plotted and the other not.
I encountered even a file when some layers are plotted and others aren’t – yet I haven’t discovered a single difference between the layers. Perhaps it’s a bug?
//I’m running on autocad 2012 lt, but the same thing occured to a friend of mine who runs on acad electrical 2012
Make sure that you do not have layer setting no plot for the layers.
The Plot setting in the Layer Manager controls whether the selected layers are plotted. If you turn off plotting for a layer, the objects on that layer are still displayed. Layers that are off or frozen are not plotted, regardless of the Plot setting.
In my experience not even this works. I have changed the setting in all the places in Autocad I can possibly find it and I still get layers in my PDFS.
I would like to have the Layer Information always set to Don’t Include. Is there a variable for this that I can set in my start up script?
If you are using the batch plot feature, don’t forget to select the “Don’t Include” option for layers in this area as well.
After several months of struggling I found out one thing: if all the “layer settings” are correct & the drawng was initiated in acad above 2011 & it’s a 2D drawing then all layers are transfered as required.
It’s enough just not to meet one condition of the above and it fails to export layer info.
It would be nice to be able to export layers in 3D drawings: imagine a piston engine chp pipeline crumped in a container – unless U’re running acad there’s no option U are able to make out what’s in the picture.
Unfortunatelly, I’m curently running on acad 2013 lt version so 3D tools are limited only to “view” (though not so comfortable as in full acad).
i can only confirm that. i am working with 2013 and to export the layers in a 3D view seems impossible, in 2D it is running without any problems, so i would see it as a bug.
Even when you ‘export: all layouts’ to pdf including 2D and 3D layouts, the one pdf page with the 3D view lists the different layers, but there is no effect on the 3D drawing in the pdf .. for the 2D is working.