Hi
I have a drawing that was made of stencils made with the generator in Menu: Tools/Create User Defined Product.
I added a metric frame A1 from the default (\Title Block Templates - Metric.s07)
The print is always to smal. Not readable. Im confused. How do i debug such a problem?

This is a printscreen A1 Titleblock with some random device draged to the drawing.:

+x

 

Rob Robinson - 2/28/2019 3:09:35 PM

I assume you mean that the text in symbols, e.g. IO labels, is too small to read when the drawing is printed out to a particular paper size.

The simple answer - without seeing the whole drawing - is that you are probably trying to put too many things, too far apart, on too small a printed page size.  When printing, the whole drawing is scaled to fit the selected paper size so the bigger the overall drawing, the smaller any particular item of text will be.

The solution is:
1) change the layout of the drawing, and/or
2) increase the paper size you print to,
so that the drawing does not need to be scaled down to fit the chosen paper size.

For more tips, please see the pinned topic A Short Guide to Good Drawing Practice

Rob,
While I understand your response and have (re)read the guide mentioned, I still feel like I'm working backwards most of the time due to the "fit to page" nature of printing.

For folks like me that end up crammingtoomuchintoagivenspaceononepage and NOT ENOUGH IN THE SPACE PROVIDED ON A SECOND PAGE, I end up with pages printed using the same page size that have text/size variations between the pages as the text above.

If I could figure out how to make the drawing process a fixed-frame format based on the page size and Title Block to be used, it seems it would make life easier.

Just a thought.

Hi Ray,

One solution is just to begin with an outline that represents the page size to which you intend to print.  Block Schematic symbols are designed to be printed at something close to 1:1, so if you're going to print to 11" x 17", begin your drawing with a rectangle that represents the drawing area for an 11" x 17" page and make sure all your symbols etc fit inside that area.

If using the default Title Block templates, to be absolutely exact you could copy the rectangle found on the Title Block Drawing Area layer of the template for the page size and orientation you're going to print to.

In this way, all drawings would be guaranteed to have legible text at the same size.

I hope this is helpful.


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

+x

 

Rob Robinson - 2/28/2019 4:58:53 PM

Hi Ray,

One solution is just to begin with an outline that represents the page size to which you intend to print.  Block Schematic symbols are designed to be printed at something close to 1:1, so if you're going to print to 11" x 17", begin your drawing with a rectangle that represents the drawing area for an 11" x 17" page and make sure all your symbols etc fit inside that area.

If using the default Title Block templates, to be absolutely exact you could copy the rectangle found on the Title Block Drawing Area layer of the template for the page size and orientation you're going to print to.

In this way, all drawings would be guaranteed to have legible text at the same size.

I hope this is helpful.

Makes sense.

Along the same lines (no pun intended here...), I've had the occasion to scale entire drawings (less the Title Block) to enlarge/shrink them to fit a specific format after drawing/design was completed.  I've noticed in such cases various object connection points frequently no longer neatly snap to the grid.  Is there a preferred way to Scale in a way to avoid messing with grid snaps?

Hi Ray,

Scaling of Block Schematics needs to be avoided for exactly the reason you've identified.

There should always be an alternative approach because, as you've implied, you are changing the drawing relative to the title block, so just turn that on its head; scale or re-insert the title block so that it changes relative to the drawing.  For example, if you want the drawing 'smaller' add, say, a white rectangle outside of the extents of the current drawing.  Then when you insert the title block it will scale itself to fit to the new extents i.e. the white rectangle.


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com