Printing

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Printing

You can print the page you are currently viewing in the Reader window by selecting FILE-PRINT from the menu bar, by clicking on the Print Button on the tool bar or by pressing the Ctrl+P shortcut key.

Once printing has been selected, you will be presented with a dialog box that allows you to specify print options. If you are viewing a text page in the reader you will see the text page dialog and if a CAD Drawing is being viewed you will see the dialog for printing drawings.

Text page printing dialog box.

The text page print dialog is the standard Windows dialog that you see in most of your applications and in the Microsoft Internet Explorer. See the Microsoft Internet Explorer documentation and the documentation for the selected printer for details. The exact operation of this dialog varies based on your version of Windows and the printer selected.

Printing CAD Drawings

When a CAD drawing is being viewed in the Reader window you will see the Print Drawing dialog box after selecting print from the tool bars.

CAD Drawing print dialog box.

The left side of the Print dialog box shows a preview of the drawing. A paper outline is overlaid on the preview that represents the size and number of pages selected. You can Zoom In and Out on the preview using the Zoom buttons in the upper right corner of the Print Dialog box.

Showbook prints your drawing on the paper to the scale you have selected on the Print dialog box. With all these options, you can automatically make any scale printout of your drawing on multiple sheets of paper. Furthermore, the drawing will be printed based on the View Settings options you currently have selected in the Reader window.

At the top of the Print Dialog box there are several Tabs that you use to select various groups of print options. Click the Tab to see the options available.

Layout Tab

You will want to be able to measure the paper printout with a scale ruler so that you can get approximate dimensions from the printout. To do this you must make the printout the proper size ratio or scale such that it works with your measuring device. Use the Drawing Scale setting on the Print Dialog box Layout Tab to specify the Scale ratio of your printout. With the Page Scale, you tell Showbook to make 1 inch (or mm) on the paper equal to some number of drawing units. Then you can use a ruler to measure how many inches on the printout equals some number of units on your layout.

For example, suppose your layout is 4' x 8' (4 feet wide by 8 feet long) drawn in units of feet (refer to the CAD Tutorial for more on units). You probably would want to print the whole rectangle on an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. Furthermore, you want the 4x8 rectangle to be as large as possible and still fit on the paper. Therefore the question becomes how many inches on the printout will equal 4 feet and 8 feet on your layout. If you pick a page scale of 1" = 2 feet, the 4 foot width of the layout will be 2" on the printout ( 4 divided by 2 equals 2 or 4/2=2). This will be too small because the paper is over 8". If you try a scale of 1, then four feet on the layout will equal 4 inches on the paper.

Following this logic you can deduce that using Landscape mode (rotates the view 90 degrees. or sideways) with a scale of 1/2 (0.5) will produce about the largest size on the paper for the 4' width on the paper ( 4/0.5 =8). However, the 8' length will be 16" at this scale (8/0.5=16) and that's too big for the paper! Therefore, a compromise is in order and a nice scale would be 1 inch on paper equals 1 drawing unit. Then the 8' length in the drawing is 8" on paper and the 4' width will be 4" on the paper.

You may want to make a full size printout of your layout. Set the Page Scale to 1/12 to make 1 foot on the drawing equal to 12 inches of paper (or 1 foot, a 1:1 ratio). If your drawing represents inches, then select a Page Scale of 1 ( 1 inch on the drawing equals 1 inch on the paper). Using the previous example, you will need to use 6 pages to cover the 4' width of the layout and 9 pages to get the 8 foot length. This makes a total of 54 pages. The maximum number of pages allowed at one time is 100 (10 pages by 10 pages).

You may specify exact coordinates of the lower left corner of the page using the text boxes on the bottom of the Layout Tab. Type the X and Y coordinates in the text boxes and then press the <Enter> key to accept what you have entered.

Page Tab

To specify the number of pages of paper to print on, select the Page Tab on the Print Dialog box. Then use the Page Columns and Rows spin buttons to specify the number of pages. Watch the preview window to see the page outlines.

You may add a heading with the drawing name and scale to the printout and/or a border around the paper by checking the Heading and Border boxes.

Printer Tab

You may change the Windows Default Printer by selecting the Printer Setup button on the Print Dialog box Printer Tab. The Printer Setup Dialog box operates the same in Showbook as it does in any Windows program (see your Windows and printer documentation).

If you wish to make your printout scale in metric units instead of inches then select the millimeter (mm) option. When millimeter is selected, the scale will be 1 millimeter on paper equals X drawing units.

The Print Ratios at the bottom of the Printer Tab of the Print dialog box allows you to make changes to the proportions of your printout. A value of 1 for the Height and Width ratio will have no effect on the printout. If you need to make your printout slightly larger on paper in the X direction, type a value of 1.01 in the Width ratio text box. Then Showbook will increase all X coordinates by this ratio when it prints. This feature allows you to change the exact drawing scale slightly for minor differences between individual printers.