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Altium CircuitStudio Forum ANSI B printing and generating PDFs
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ANSI B printing and generating PDFs

eng101
eng101 over 3 years ago

I'm trying to print schematic sheets using the Project > Generate Outputs workflow and the page sizes are all scaled incorrectly such that the schematic only takes up a portion of the page.

There are a bunch of topics on this in the forum but no definitive answers other than it might be something to do with the printer drivers. I've uninstalled every printer, deleted them from the registry, reinstalled Circuit Studio, (doing a clean uninstall that deleted all of my saved preferences and settings), deleted the OutJob files for the projects and yet it keeps doing it on every single project. Does anyone have a definitive solution for this or a printer driver that I can use that is known to work?

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  • eng101
    eng101 over 3 years ago in reply to shabaz +1
    I appreciate the response, several other people are using it here without issue but I haven't been able to replicate their configuration or figure out what's different on mine so I don't believe it's an…
  • tarribred61
    tarribred61 over 3 years ago in reply to eng101 +1
    Maybe you can post a screen shot of what your print config settings are?
  • NHEE2
    NHEE2 over 3 years ago +1
    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…
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  • shabaz
    shabaz over 3 years ago

    I don't use CircuitStudio, but given you could be waiting an unspecified amount of time if it happens to be a bug then perhaps it is better to just live with working around the problem, since it appears Circuit Studio supports clipboard operations:

    /products/manufacturers/altium/w/documents/4011/exporting-circuitstudio-schematics-to-svg-and-dxf

    (i.e. copy-paste into Word or PowerPoint or Inkscape, and then drag to whatever scale you want, and print from there, or export from those applications to whatever format you wish).

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  • eng101
    eng101 over 3 years ago in reply to shabaz

    I appreciate the response, several other people are using it here without issue but I haven't been able to replicate their configuration or figure out what's different on mine so I don't believe it's an unsurmountable bug in the SW.

    I can print the schematic pages individually to PDF and they scale fine, but using the "generate outputs" feature embeds the component data in a clickable PDF which is very useful for design reviews, this is primarily why I would like to get it working.

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  • tarribred61
    tarribred61 over 3 years ago in reply to eng101

    Maybe you can post a screen shot of what your print config settings are?

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  • eng101
    eng101 over 3 years ago in reply to tarribred61

    image

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  • eng101
    eng101 over 3 years ago in reply to tarribred61

    image

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  • tarribred61
    tarribred61 over 3 years ago in reply to eng101

    So sorry you are having problems.  I recall having issues before that required deleting the outjob file.  It also then required closing the project in CS and reopening it. But as you say, you tried that already without success.  I don't know if the suggestions below will fix your problem but it may help learn something.

    Something I can think of is to check on the PDF export settings.  Screen shot below shows this.  You access it with the File > System Preferences menu.

    image

    In my installation, I have one size for an 11x17 page.  You might check what your settings are and set it up for page sizes you use if needed.  Also, after doing this, close and restart CS just in case it is holding on to settings in the memory.  You can make custom ones if you need to.

    image

    Next, open Windows Explorer and go to your project folder.  Find the <project>.outjob file and rename it to add the text BACKUP (or some other prefix) in front of the project name.

    Keep Windows Explorer window open and go to CS and then close the project (save any changes if requested).

    [edits:) Before reopening the project, make sure your default Windows printer is pointing at a printer that is known to work with CS.  Otherwise, when you reopen CS and generate a clean outjob file it will still use the problematic print driver.  Also, if you had previously changed the project name by saving as a different file name, the outjob file associated with the project may have the older name based on the prior project name.  That is, renaming a project with file > Save Project As... does not update the outjob file name.  FWIW you can open the project PrjPcb file in a text editor and view all its settings.  I haven't tried to edit these manually.  The last line in the file in one of my projects has info related to the SmartPDF.

    Then in CS reopen the project. Reopen one of the schematic pages. In the menus, choose Project > Generate Outputs.  In the Windows Explorer window you should see it generate a new outjob file for the project.

    Now, in the CS window for Generate output files, choose the Schematic Prints and Page setup.  In my setup the scaling is 1.0.  Set up this for Tabloid size, Fit Document On Page, Color and Landscape mode.  Then close the pop-up window and try printing.

    Note, I typically work with a C-size schematic sheet (17x22 inch) and print to B-size (11x17inch) without problems.

    When doing all this, I notice that in my CS set up the available paper sizes had old sizes from some other printer driver.  It didn't get an updated list until after I had renamed the outjob file and then closed and reopened the project.

    Unfortunately, the outjob has to be setup again for all the other printouts in the PCB mode once you eliminate (rename or delete).  However, since you renamed it you could always get it back by naming it back and restarting your project

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  • tarribred61
    tarribred61 over 3 years ago in reply to tarribred61

    I edited my previous response a little.  It is a good idea to have the default Windows printer be a printer that is known to work with CS before you do something that makes the outjob file.  Else, the outjob gets tags for the printer and you cannot change them without creating a new outjob file (then you lose your configurations).

    For whatever reason, the printer setup menus in CS do NOT seem to change all the various tags in the project and outjob files that tell it what printers to use and how to scale things.

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  • eng101
    eng101 over 3 years ago in reply to tarribred61
    tarribred61 said:
    make sure your default Windows printer is pointing at a printer that is known to work with CS.

    Part of what I'm asking is if anyone can point me to a printer that is known to work with CS because it doesn't look like anything I have on my machine works and I've tried several, including the Microsoft Print to PDF and several third party PDF printers, along with the Xerox machine we have at the office.

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