Can't figure out a print issue
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Hello, I'm a woodworker from Canada who has been using Sketchup for about 6 months. I'm running it on a Mac. The thing that's driving me crazy is when I try to print a drawing, I'll set print Setup OK, but in Document Setup it will restrict the height (Portrait, for example) to about 4 inches of an 11 inch page. If I use Landscape it's a similar narrow band, wasting the rest of the page. Has anyone else had this problem and is there a fix?
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What is your printing method? Usually I export and print that, because the direct quality from SU is poor. When you export you have more control of the size and you can always crop in Preview.
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The print method is as simple as it gets- set up the page and document, then hit Print. Maybe it's a Mac quirk, but I just don't understand why it narrows the height, but not, apparently, the width. Also doesn't seem to matter if I print in perspective or scale (in front, side or top view, of course), I still have the problem. Exporting will probably work, although I like to do a lot of prints as I go along, since its nice to have a hard copy of a part finished design so I can sketch out some of my issues away from the computer.
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Actually I don't get the same experience as you. Now I didn't print it. I just looked at the print preview. But we could try a poll: How many people like the way SketchUp prints? There always seems to be some complaints. It's as if they've never figured out a good way (like a print port), thus the exports.
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So if you don't get the same experience as me, that makes me wonder if there's something in my setup that's causing this. I will freely admit that from a computer literacy perspective, I would occupy the notch below Brutal (eg I'm having a fellow come over tomorrow to show me how to export stuff). Thus I'm not real sure how to go about evaluating my setup....
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In document setup and "fit view to page" the longest dimension will be fit on the page. So if you have a wide window, SU will fit it into 8" horizontal space or whatever your print area is. The other dimension is adjusted accordingly. Similarly when you set dimensions rather than "fit to page". It adjust the other aspect to get the whole window into the print. SU tries to print the whole window, not fill up a piece of paper. Could you be getting a narrow band because your window is wide?
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Quite possibly/probably. How do you determine the window size, and what could one do to make it smaller/narrower? By the way, I appreciate your help on this, thanks.
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What you see on the screen--just make the SU window different aspect ratios by dragging the corner. I know, it should be more elegant...
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That seems to work. Thanks again.
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