ANSI B printing and generating PDFs

Ok, had time to play so I took a look at this.  I can easily cause a B size sheet to print on 4 sheets of a pdf files by NOT checking "fit document on page" in page setup in project outputs with schematic checked as the output.

Check the following and try your printing again.

1.  make your sheet size match what you want for output (i..e. if you want 11x17 output, make the sheet 11x17)

2.  in spite of the fact that your sheet is 11x17 and you may choose an 11x17 output device, I found that I still need to check "fit document on page" or else it will be broken up in the output file.

3.  in the system settings, I also set pdf output to 11x17 but DID NOT explore where this takes effect.

So, be sure to make the sheet size match your output size and STILL, tell it to fit on one page as a precaution

added - What size is your output device ?

added - my apologies as I just saw your other replies.  So you are looking for a searchable pdf, correct ?  This is a function of the pdf output generator that Altium is using.  There may be a means of accessing that, I'm not sure.

Good luck !

If I go to the "Outputs" toolbar and click "Print" > "Print Preview" the schematic shows up scaled incorrectly and placed in the wrong part of the sheet (top left corner), if I proceed to print it comes out fine. Unfortunately this method only gives me individual schematic sheets and they do not contain any embedded component information. According to some previous posts Altium says that this "Print Preview" error is indicative of a conflict between CircuitStudio and the installed printer driver, FWIW I've tried a lot of different printer drivers and none of them seem to help.

The "correct" way of creating a PDF with all of the schematic sheets in a single file and containing the embedded component information is to go to the "Project" toolbar, click "Generate Outputs" > "Schematic Prints", but this creates a PDF that looks just like the print preview (the schematic is scaled incorrectly and placed incorrectly on the sheet, but the sheet is the correct size). The scaling is set to "Fit Document On Page" and the paper size is set to "Tabloid". The paper sizes come from the printer driver, so I used to have an 11x17 but no longer do after changing the printer driver to try and solve this, FWIW Tabloid == 11x17 so it shouldn't really matter. If I change the scaling to try and "grow" the schematic image it actually splits it across multiple sheets, if I try to change the margin width it doesn't help, it seems like CircuitStudio thinks the schematic is actually taking up the entire sheet but it's not.

If I go to the "Outputs" toolbar and click "Print" > "Print Preview" the schematic shows up scaled incorrectly and placed in the wrong part of the sheet (top left corner), if I proceed to print it comes out fine. Unfortunately this method only gives me individual schematic sheets and they do not contain any embedded component information. According to some previous posts Altium says that this "Print Preview" error is indicative of a conflict between CircuitStudio and the installed printer driver, FWIW I've tried a lot of different printer drivers and none of them seem to help.

The "correct" way of creating a PDF with all of the schematic sheets in a single file and containing the embedded component information is to go to the "Project" toolbar, click "Generate Outputs" > "Schematic Prints", but this creates a PDF that looks just like the print preview (the schematic is scaled incorrectly and placed incorrectly on the sheet, but the sheet is the correct size). The scaling is set to "Fit Document On Page" and the paper size is set to "Tabloid". The paper sizes come from the printer driver, so I used to have an 11x17 but no longer do after changing the printer driver to try and solve this, FWIW Tabloid == 11x17 so it shouldn't really matter. If I change the scaling to try and "grow" the schematic image it actually splits it across multiple sheets, if I try to change the margin width it doesn't help, it seems like CircuitStudio thinks the schematic is actually taking up the entire sheet but it's not.