Plan printing without taping lots of sheets

[Dad_flyer]

I have printed a lot of unusual things over the years, and I thought that I knew all the tricks in printer drivers. I have just come across a useful feature of the Acrobat print dialogue and my Canon A4 multifunction printer.

I wanted to print out a plan from Outerzone. As it is ~ 26"x36" it comes out tiled:

Well, I can tape them all together, and I have done for many other plans. Getting them all lined up is a pain and some small parts end up over 6 sheets which would nearly fit on one.

I have now found the bit in the Acrobat Reader print driver that does it. Here is a bad screenshot of the file and the tiling dialog.

Any settings I tried would not change how it tiled. To make it work I had to go back to the document and zoom in and resize and shape the window to show just the part that I want.

Going back to the print dialog, it still shows the tiling as before, but there is a 'more options" button I had never used before:

"More options" includes a button to print just the current view. So now the part is only tiled over two pages. It will not quite fit on one.

 

 

 

 

Edited By Dad_flyer on 01/02/2020 16:18:53

[Dad_flyer]

Hmm, it will not quite fit on one, but that is one sheet of A4. As the sheets go in to the printer short end first, surely I could just use a longer piece of paper? Two sheets taped together, ready to feed in.

Fed in with the  tape on the non-printing side, and the overlap in the direction that will not snag as the paper goes in.

In the printer settings, I set a custom paper at A4 width, but 400mm long. This does not need to match the actual sheet length exactly.

Now the part prints on one sheet. I did still have to tape two sheets of paper, but taping them before printing means there is no alignment of the plan to worry about.

It works!

 

Edited By Dad_flyer on 01/02/2020 16:29:26

[Dad_flyer]

Mechanically the printer should be able to handle a sheet as long as you like, but the software limits it to 670mm for this particular printer. That is enough for the fuselage of this model, and for its wing. Three sheets of A4 taped up.

So all the parts for this model can be printed without a large format printer, and without aligning lots of sheets of paper.

For the horizontal stabiliser, and other parts that only just fit on one sheet, I need to switch off the 'poster' option or it still tries to tile them. Remember to set "actual size" so that it does not shrink to fit the page.

I expect you all knew that method before

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

I shall certainly bear this tip in mind. Thanks

[Mike T]

That's excellent, thanks for sharing. It does seem to be printer dependent, as I can't see any option to select a custom paper size with mine (HP Deskjet 410).

Just a thought re paper. If you can get hold of some A0 or A1 sheets fairly cheaply, you could cut these down to A4 width strips and avoid the seam altogether.

[Wilco Wingco]

Sounds like a plan.

[Torsten Spitzner]

Ooooo, that's clever. I will be trying that as well.

[Dad_flyer]

Mike T, it certainly will be printer dependent. The Canon I have is nothing special, chosen for low cost per page more than anything, so I hoped it might work for many other printers.

It may also be printer driver dependent. Windows 10 has some 'simple' drivers that remove most of the useful options - particularly when Chrome or Edge want to take over viewing your pdfs, rather than letting you use Acrobat.

Wilco, ,

[Capt Kremen]

Why not simply Download the 'Outerzone/Aerofred' etc. plan onto a PC stick.

Take it to your local 'Prontoprint' shop, (other print shops are available!), and for usually a very modest fee, they will print the plan in original or any size you wish. As many copies as you like and no joins as it's all on one clean sheet.

[Dad_flyer]

Capt K, they would indeed and it would look nicer. There is a printer around here that does a reasonable price, but I would need to be organised enough to go over when they are open. I tend to be thinking about plans in the evening or too late on a Saturday, so an alternative method is helpful to me.

For this plan I need 4 copies of the wing part as it is a small biplane, but I don't want 4 copies of everything on the big sheet.

[Steven S]

Using the take a snapshot button works nicely also. Use the "Take a snapshot" button in the "Edit" dropdown tab, drag a box around the part you want, then "Control P" or the print tab and print.

[Dad_flyer]

Thanks SS, I use snapshot a lot, I never realised it also selects a section to print.