Out of memory Printing error

[landscapecity]

Hi all,

I'm running VW 12 on XP with 1 GB of Ram and a slower 1.3 GHz processor. I am having lots of problems exporting TIFF's out of VW at 300dpi. I consistently get the out of memory error even though when I watch task manager I have over 400 MB's free. The drawing I have is relatively simple and straight forward. Just trying to print 1 sheet of one floor that is about 1000 sq ft house. It is a viewport on a sheet.

My sheet is set up as 24x36 and am really confused why VW calculates a dimension as 25.xxxx when I type in 36 as the width (when upping the standard 72 dpi VW auto shrinks the sheet size so I have to adjust). Seems odd to me.

I've been using VW for about 3 weeks now and can't say I'm too impressed. I used Mini-CAD years ago and some of the stability problems are still around. I also exported a file in dwg format and VW converted a lot of elements to raster graphics instead of vectors (dimension text for example). That was perplexing. Made for a very large file.

Anyhow, any help on this memory issue would be appreciated. Standard print quality is 300 dpi and you'd think VW could handle that!

Brian

[Michael_Eschenbach]

Brian,

the best way to print something from vectorworks, if you want to print a whole sheet is by printing to pdf.... are you mac or pc.... if mac, just hit command P to print, and click on the pdf button on the bottom left of the print dialog box... "save to pdf" and then open the file in pdf and print it.

or export an image file as .jpg, which reduces the file size considerably....

best of luck

Mike

[islandmon]

Brian, there should be no issue with a VP sheet@24x36, dpi300. So this looks to be a print driver issue NOT a VW issue. Happens all the time ; )

As for the DWG export, this can also be confusing especially when one realizes that they are exporting 2d in 3d or visa versa and that various embedded images & textures are involved. There's no end to the madness as these forums note ; )

Overall VW is very efficient at handling printing & exporting. Perhaps, if you provide a few more step by step specifics we can better help to resolve these problems with you.

[landscapecity]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies! I'm on Windows XP so the PDF isn't an option unless I purchase that software too. Through other threads I understand there are mixed experiences with jpg's and the local printers in my area (Sacramento) really prefer TIFF for a number of reasons so I'd like to stick with that if at all possible. Since I'm saving a file to TIFF format I'm not sure how this could be a driver issue unless there is an update to 12.0.1 that makes TIFF export more efficient. So for steps here goes:

1. view a sheet that has a viewport of the floor plan (in wireframe mode with a title block inlcuded; sheet at 1/4"=1'0" scale)

2. Go to file-->export image file-->pop up window

3. Select 300 dpi instead of 72

4. Click set output size to 36" wide (I don't know why VW auto shrinks the size when you upsize the dpi; actually I leave the 24" dimension at 25.xxx or whatever VW calculates)

5. Select TIFF as the output file type from the drop down

6. Click the Save button to create the file.

I think it's really pretty straight forward which is why I'm so surprised.

Thanks!

Brian

[islandmon]

According to my calcs ..if you're attempting to export a 300dpi RGB @24x36 your file size is 222.5mb. This is utterly inefficient bitmapping compared with a vector PDF that will be less that 500k size file for text&line work. If you export a grey Tiff then the file size is reduced to around 75mb... still many times larger than necessary for printing.

Recall that Tiff is a blunt algorithm depending entirely on the initial conditions ... in this case 300dpi@24x36 whether or not any information is contained within that space.

You are far better off printing to PDF. You can also print to any compatible GIMP Driver ( MacOSX has mucho ) and then send the print file.

[cbaarch]

I think that you are missing the print capabilites in VW

in vw 12 you need to learn how to set up sheets and then use viewports to set up your work on a sheet

and learn how anotation can be used especially for drawing titles (using the tool) since it will give you the scale fo the VP.

the title blocks should be 1:1 scale on the sheet layer

you then print a sheet to a printer

you have not said what printer you have access to:

but the printer is defined when you set up a sheet

you can also print to pdf using many free versions

such as cutepdf; pdf995; etc..

most are downloadable at http://www.download.com

[landscapecity]

Thanks for the tips! I set up all the sheets, VP's, layers, classes etc. as instructed by the book from the get go but something must have gone haywire. I used the title block template in VW and it places itself on the sheet fine. The viewports and viewports on sheets were set up automatically for me when I used the project wizard set up. All of my scales are set up appropriately. I will find out what printer the print shop is using and hopefully that will clear up these memory errors although if you're using a raster format like TIFF I'm not clear how that will help.

I'll definately check out the free PDF resources, thanks!

[Michael_Eschenbach]

for your information,

I send all of my printing to the local blueprint shop as pdf, and have for years... works fine... also, to cut down on your file sizes, try exporting to .jpg format... mucho smaller and most print shops should handle it well.