Ability to temporarily nominate a section of drawing for printing

[Christiaan]

Sometimes it's useful to print something to get a better idea of what it will come out like or discuss it with colleague. Which means you either need to print the whole drawing, or print part of it by setting it up in the Design or Sheet Layer.

All of which seems unnecessarily time consuming or wasteful, so it would be quite useful if we had some kind of marquee tool that let us quickly nominate a part of a drawing to send to the printer with a few clicks.

[Gytis]

When I need to print a bit as you describe, I save the file, adjust paper size/orientation in Page Setup, use Move Page Tool (Option-Z) to focus on desired area, Print, then Revert to Saved. Not quite as quick as a [wished-for] marquee, but pretty quick and bug-free.

[P Retondo]

Christiaan, great idea - I think I recall putting it on the wish list in the past. With Viewports it's now a bit easier to print out a piece of a drawing, and I keep a couple of sheet layers formatted for just that purpose. But how much better it would be to have a print dialog box that has an option "by marquee," and would work in a way similar to creating an image file. It would be great if the "Export pdf" tool had a similar capability, so we could just marquee around a bit of the drawing and export a .pdf to email a consultant, etc. It's all about speed and ease of workflow and information transfer.

[mike m oz]

On a Mac (at least) you can already sort of do this:

- Select Print

- In the dialog box that opens Select VectorWorks on the third pop-up down.

- Check mark the option for Print Current View only.

- Hit Print to confirm and actually print.

[Gytis]

Mike: your method still prints the entire Page.

Pete: workaround I outlined works for Export/Print pdf, on sheet or design layers. Use paper size as substitute marquee, i.e. photo sizes like 5 x 7.....

[Christiaan]

When I need to print a bit as you describe, I save the file, adjust paper size/orientation in Page Setup, use Move Page Tool (Option-Z) to focus on desired area, Print, then Revert to Saved. Not quite as quick as a [wished-for] marquee, but pretty quick and bug-free.

This is exactly what I find unnecessarily time-consuming. I do the same as you in some cases (mostly I use Viewports), except I don't create a new file; I just close without saving and reopen.

[Gytis]

OK...what about using Grab or a widget like Screenshot Plus to make quick tiffs? I use this often in dialogs. It even is a marquee format! ;-)

BTW, in former method, no new file, not Save As-I just see it as a temporary file adjustment which I want to be sure does not hose any desired permanent settings.

[islandmon]

The WGR approach works very well with a WGR template set-up for the small area printer and a ModLayer with UnlockedLink to move around the page print area. A WGR + VP >ModLayer allows for image manipulation testing of the print zones.

[Christiaan]

OK...what about using Grab or a widget like Screenshot Plus to make quick tiffs?

Yeah I do this too, for sending sketches by email mostly. Problem is they're only at screen resolution, which means they're not good for printing out to see what it will look like.

[Christiaan]

The WGR approach works very well with a WGR template set-up for the small area printer and a ModLayer with UnlockedLink to move around the page print area. A WGR + VP >ModLayer allows for image manipulation testing of the print zones.

Nice idea, but also another management and training overhead in large/medium office.

[Guest]

Why not marquee (zoom) around the portion of the drawing you want to print, then use print current view in the print dialog box?

That should only print whatever is visible on the screen and can stretch/shrink to fit the selected piece of paper.

[Christiaan]

Ha, yes that works Katie. Perfect. I didn't try because Gytis said it still prints the whole page. Thanks.

All we need now is a "Zoom to A4" command.

[P Retondo]

But keep this wish on the list! Zooming to a particular view to print gives us something out of scale. And not all printer drivers (mine, for example) support printing the current view.

[Gytis]

Sorry, Mike-my mistake for not trying your suggestion zoomed-in. I tried from larger than Page.... Works pretty well, though sometimes zoomed-in views on complex 3-D models (especially in wireframe or dashed hidden line) leave me struggling to find context.

I'll see what works best in day-to-day workflow.