When I go to do a print preview my pages vanish
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!Hi guys
Doing a design for a client and they want paper output!
I have taken the model over to LO and generated different views and when I set up my A3 printer and paper to A3 landscape and do a print preview the damn thing vanishes - not even the paper appears!!
What am I doing wrong? Tried attaching file but its way too big!!! What the !!!! Why are the so big???
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While I don't know why the papare and print preview vanishes, the file size of a *.layout file is rather big because
- it contains the skp file inside
- contains the "view" of every page where skp files are inserted in png format (and depending on your LO settings, it can be rather big especially on A3).
You can see all these "ingredients" if you rename the *.layout file to *.zip and open it.
Have you tried to export to PDF? (That would not waste your printer cartridge). Maybe if you could export to pdf with a high enough resolution, that would make it to the printer, too.
Or see if only the print preview is buggy by "printing" the stuff with a virtual printer like PDFCreator or such.
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Hi Gaieus
I did an export to pdf and it printed fine. Just need to play around with LO to get my output improved. My intention is to present on A1 paper to really show all the elements of the design on one piece of paper so I really need to ge the hang of it.
Are there any specific guides to getting the best of layout?
Cheers
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OK, then at least that part seems to be working.
@dermotcoll said:
...Are there any specific guides to getting the best of layout?
Well, I guess all you need to do is to experiment a little bit.
As for some setup tips and tricks;
- I File > Document setup > Paper tab, set the rendering quality of Editing to something lowers (depending on your paper size, medium or low) and only set output quality to high. This will allow for faster working (refreshing of model etc.) while gives you a better output only when exporting/printing.
- In the SketchUp model dialog > Bottom right, you see options for rendering in raster/vector/mixed mode. Depending on your needed output, you may play around with these settings (vector mode won't export textures just colours).
- Eventually, you may wish to "explode" your model and edit edges (assigning different line styles to them) but only do this when you are sure that you are done as this is irreversible and ultimately breaks the reference between that view inserted into LO and the SU model (i.e. you won't update the model any more if you edit it in SU).
These are all different output quality tips - you will find the workflow best fit for you.
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Thanks for your help
Dermot
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Dermot,
The print preview may be using your default printer and paper size. Try setting the A3 printer as your default printer in your OS settings.
Cheers,
CMD -
I find printing directly from layout to be a real problem, it never gets it right. I can only imagine that the sheer size of my layout files are way too much for my printers. I've had up to 50 meg files and I just don't have the memory in the printer to handle that.
I always export to pdf then print but even then, there are some problems which, thankfully can usually be solved. My models are always in hybrid mode which tends to make huge pdfs, like 50+ megs big ( which could explain why the printer can't handle that) BUT to fix this, inside adobe acrobat you can reduce the file size which reduces the pdf so much it boggles my mind. I've had a file go from 74 megs to 5 megs. I don't know what it's doing but it works and I don't lose quality of the file.
BUT the problem is that sometimes after all of that the print still doesn't work, it prints one of the images and no lines or 4 out of 5 pages are fine and one is messed up even though the pdf looks fine. I traced those types of problems to missing reference files or ones that need updates, so see if your references are correct. Other than that I'm not sure.
jsteacy
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