Well, I'm not doing much other than watching a recording of the All Star game tonite... so I *did* reinstall 2004 LT for the fun of it.  Or for the shock of it - I'm so used to 2012 now!  I missed my ribbon.  :)

But it was worth it for a couple interesting things none the less.  I saved out my primary 2012 DWT file as a 2004 DWG.  This contains the paper space title blocks I use almost daily for ANSI A (8.5x11) and ANSI B (11x17) paper.  Then I opened that in 2004 and saved it out as a template file.  When I opened a new 2004 drawing using it everything but one feature worked.  My title blocks are fully annotated and in some cases use custom fields.  In 2012 I pull the Layout tab name from a system variable field and use it to complete the Sht number.  This didn't work in 2004, but everything else did.

The 2004 template also handled of all the text and dimstyles I'd created in the 2012 file.  But their annotative features won't work because there is no cannoscale variable in 2004. 

But... the idea of printing from paper space (Layouts) is virtually unchanged in all these years.  It's a bit easier now, but still workable and worth learning in 2004.  It'll serve you well when you do move up to a new version of ACAD.  You have an ANSI B template in your folder that ships with LT.  Start a new file and use the ANSI B – Named or Color Dependent Plot Style DWT.  These both contain an ANSI B Layout tab with a sample title block that you can modify to your company standard.  I would suggest you delete the Viewport that is already on it before you resave it as your new DWT.

Remember that DWT files can contain a lot of stuff to help you standardize your work and save you time.  You want to include all standard layers, dimension and text and table styles you might want in new drawings.  Template files are never really done or complete... you’ll continue to improve them as you learn and do new things.

I plot from paper space all the time and you can in 2004 too.  I plot to DWFs using the DWF to pc3 plot style because (1) I frequently need to send others DWFs for review purposes, but also (2) because I like to plot to PDFs as well, and for my money the Design Review program creates better PDFs than AutoCAD does.  Design Review 2013 is free.  If you don’t already have it, get it.

Spend a little time after you do some of the above and study the concept of Viewports, how to create them, how to scale them, and how they work in paper space.  Create your own text and dimension styles if you don’t already have them.  Mess around with all this a little bit and come back with questions as you have them.  You’ll find that plotting from paper space now (even in 2004) is easier than doing it from model space.

 

In the meantime I'll be jangling my memory to try and recall how I used to plot with this version myself!  I've learned a thing or two since then ...