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.:

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


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

+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

Rob is there somewhare a option to fix the atomatic scale that makes a drawing to fit on a page from automatic to 1:1?
Im fighting against an automator right now. I understand that there are customers that like/need that feature.
For me thats a nightmare.
I redrawn my schematic now splitting it up to several pages and it looks missajusted comparing 4 pages not one has the same textsize than another.
Presenting a Drawing that has different sizes of boxes even for the same device is not nice.

User Defined Print Scale is not currently an option, but if you use the technique described above - i.e. just add a rectangle for the drawing area of the paper size you want at 1:1, and use that same rectangle for all drawings to print at that paper size - then everything will be the same size at print time.

i hope this makes sense.


Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com

+x

 

Rob Robinson - 3/1/2019 12:06:50 PM

User Defined Print Scale is not currently an option, but if you use the technique described above - i.e. just add a rectangle for the drawing area of the paper size you want at 1:1, and use that same rectangle for all drawings to print at that paper size - then everything will be the same size at print time.

i hope this makes sense.

I have Landscape(2xA2, 1xA1, 1xA3)  & Portrait(1xA3) so, now, do i realy have to calculate the scale and match a square to each Pagesize so that the Print looks same size prior to drawing my schematic? And on top: as the Frame Header is always same size equaly if its a A3 or a A1 its almost impossible to find the correct formula to calculate the scale of the rectangle correctly for each page size...
Thats a verry uncool workaround.
I had a look in to Vectorworks how they handle pages and they actualy have a background that scales with the zoomlevel so i can always see how big a page will be.
here is a printscreen:

Hi Novski,

Well, the problem you're trying to solve is telling different drawings that know nothing about each other that they have to be the same size in print, so you'll need to add some data to do that.  In my opinion, the addition of a simple rectangle is the easiest way to do this, and for Block Schematics you don't have to calculate any scale; it's just the size of the drawing area in print.

By the way, the ability to set a Print Scale does not in any way solve the problem.  You are using a Title Block, and when the Title Block is inserted into the drawing it sizes itself to fit the drawing.  Setting a Print Scale after the Title Block has been sized to the drawing would simply mean that the Title Blocks will be different sizes in different drawings in print - this will look even worse.

Given that the real issue is sizing the Title Block, I therefore cannot think of a more elegant solution than starting with a rectangle to represent the drawing area.

To make things even easier you could save the rectangle for each of your paper sizes as a custom symbol so that they can be dragged in from the Symbol Browser; this way you create the rectangle once and recycle it for every drawing. Here's a suggested procedure:

1) Choose File | Open and open the Title Block template e.g. "Title Block Templates - Metric.s07"
2) Go to the tab for the page size and orientation you want e.g. "A3 Landscape"
3) Drag a selection rectangle around everything you can see and delete, to remove all visible objects.
4) Choose View | Layers and make the Title Block Drawing Area layer visible.  You'll see a single rectangle.
5) Choose File | Export | AutoCAD and save to a sensible folder and filename e.g. Documents\Symbols\Page Sizes\A3 Landscape.dwg
6) Repeat steps 2-5 for each page size and orientation you want.
7) In Tools | Personalization | Symbol Directories click on New and select Documents\Symbols.  Click on OK

Now, if you want different Block Schematic drawings to have the exact same-sized symbols in print, start each  drawing with the same page size symbol, selected from the Symbol Browser.  Just remember not to place symbols etc outside of the drawing area.

This is less work than it sounds and it will solve the exact problem that you're facing which is, to restate, how to have Title Blocks inserted at the same size across different drawings, ignoring the actual size of the extents of the symbols, cables etc in those drawings.

I hope this gives you all you need.

Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com