The Print command is designed to print a single view from your job file. This is in contrast to the printing capabilities of AGi32's Reports environment, which allows multiple views to be printed or plotted to a single sheet. The Print command, with its single view capability, is most useful for check plots, quick output to fax or to be used in conjunction with output from the Print Text command.
The selected view can be printed using a user defined scale or "fit" a to the selected page size. AGi32 offers options to determine what is plotted and how the image fits on the paper. You can control the area of the drawing, its scale, rotation and location on the paper.
Small printing devices, such as ink jets and laser printers, are designed to use a restricted media size. They are obviously not capable of producing large drawings at a legible scale on a single sheet of paper. AGi32 allows drawings to be printed at any scale, even if multiple pages are required. The selected output will be paginated appropriately with hatch marks indicated at the corners for easy matching of pages.
Windows printers
AGi32 will print or plot to any Windows printer or plotter, as well as to the Adobe Acrobat Distiller. There is generally little preparation needed to print. AGi32 references the default settings (including paper size, rotation, quality, etc.) for all Windows printers. The user may change the paper size and orientation, or configure the printer properties to write to a file. When selecting a plotter, you may need to configure additional properties, such as pen configuration, print quality, paper source, etc.
Where
The Where section indicates specific printer parameters such as device, paper size, orientation and port with regards to printer setup. To change any of these parameters, click the Print Setup button.
If the selected printer supports color, both the Color and Black and White options are active. If the selected printer does not support color printing, only the Black and White option will be available. Some monochrome laser printers allow the user to select the Color option so that they may print in shades of gray.
What
The What section describes exactly what you would like to print. Begin by selecting the desired View name from the View pull-down menu - if more than one view exists. Once the view has been selected, choose the portion of the view you are interested in printing: Display, Extents or Window. AGi32 will retain the last selection as the default.
Display - The Display options prints the entire contents of the selected AGi32 View including the white drawing area. This option can be useful when establishing a buffer around your drawing, or more likely, after zooming in to t a particular scene of interest, then plotting that exact view.
Extents - The Extents options prints the coordinate extents (minimum and maximum X, Y and Z coordinates) of the drawing. This is the most common method of plotting an entire drawing.
Limits- The Limits options uses the drawing Limits specified in the View-Set Limits command to determine what coordinate information is included in the plot. The default Limits defined in AGi32 are 0,0 100,100 and may not be relevant for the current drawing.
Window - The Window option allows the user to determine what will be plotted within a specified cropping window.
Margins
Margins are measured from the edge of the paper inward. Minimum margins are dictated by the selected printer and media size. AGi32 allows the user to increment the margin size individually on each side of the paper (by 5 mm or 0.25 inch depending on the media). When the print scale requires multiple sheets of paper, each sheet will apply the specified margins. When selecting the Center Image option, the margins are controlled automatically.
The Reset button will reset all margins to their minimum values.
Scale
Job files created in AGi32, or merged from other sources (such as DWG or DXF files) are used at a 1:1 scale in the graphics window. Each drawing unit represent 1 foot or 1 meter depending on the display units selected. In other words, when the cursor is moved across the screen, the coordinate locations appear in terms of drawing units.
When the drawing is printed, it is scaled in order to restrict it to a particular media size or to correspond with certain guidelines. To scale the drawing, you need to specify the number of drawing units that corresponds to each plotter/printer unit. When the current display unit is feet, AGi32 will present a print scale of 1 = <X>'. When the current display unit is meters, AGi32 will present a print scale of 1:<X>. A scale greater than zero must be entered when the User Defined Scale is selected.
Scaling factors operate independently of selected media sizes. For example, a job file created with display units of Feet and plotted to A4 paper (210 x 297 mm) will still ask for a user defined scale of 1 = <X>'. Similarly, a job file created with display units of Meters will ask for a 1:<X> ratio whether the paper is in Metric or English units (A4 or letter). AGi32 handles the units conversion automatically.
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Scaling Examples to fit on C Size Paper (22" x 17", Landscape Orientation) |
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Maximum Extents Dimension/Display Units |
Suggested Standard Scale |
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780 Feet |
1 (Inch) = 64 Feet (use 1/8 Architectural Scale) |
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240 Meters |
1 : 600 (use 1:60 Engineering Scale) |
Scale to Fit
When the Scale to Fit option is selected, AGi32 will fit the selected view option (Display, Extents or Window) within the printable area. Once this option has been selected, the scaling factor will gray out, disallowing any modification to the scaling factor.
Special Formatting
When printing the drawing selection on one page, AGi32 allows you to center the image within the page. The margins will be recalculated to center the image, and then deactivated. To reactivate the margins and change the image formatting, deselect the Center Image box. At this time you may change the View options, decrease or reset the margins.
It is best to center the image last, due to the way AGi32 calculates the margins. If for some reason you need to change the View options or scale when the image is centered, uncenter the image and reset the margins first. This recalibration is necessary because AGi32 centers the image and increases the margins based on the previous image size.
When the number of pages is greater than one, centering the image will not result in any changes to the printed output.
Print Preview
Once the View option and scale have been specified, the Print Preview option is available. Based on the current print specifications, Print Preview will display the drawing image as it will appear on each page of the printed output. When multiple pages exist, the pages are numbered from left to right beginning at the top. Extra blank pages may be displayed if the View option type includes white space (e.g. Display). These pages can be excluded from the output list in the Print Details dialog.
Print Details
The Print Details dialog appears after the Print button is selected. This dialog allows you to select the umber of copies to print and which pages will be printed when AGi32 is breaking the output into multiple pages. You can select a range of pages by entering the page numbers separated by a hyphen (e.g. 6-10) or random pages by separating the page numbers by commas (e.g. 5,7,11,12,15).