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different sheet sizes


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Okay, that seems like the way to do it. On a similar subject, what about when you want to print just a part of drawing. Maybe to test line weights or fonts or for whatever reason you need just a piece of the overall. I couldn't find a way to window the part I want to print. A marquee or something.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I often create a temporary sheet layer, copy the viewport, crop and/or scale as needed, and print. Then delete the sheet layer when you're done.

An alternate method would be to duplicate the sheet layer, crop and/or scale as needed, and print.

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I always have variably sized sheets of in the same Vectorworks file, and never had any problems with it. I usually have an Arch D (24"x36") for the plans, and separate US Letter sized sheet sized for an addendum or perspective rendering. The scaling can then be done with the sheet viewports before exporting PDFs.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi Bob,

Yes. I typically do the same as you with the mixing of sheet sizes. The original post had to do with printing out half size check plots. While there are several ways of doing this, I think exporting a full size PDF and scaling the PDF from the Adobe Reader Print dialog makes the most sense. This method gives you a PDF that can be printed at full size, or any scale needed. I often name these PDFs with the date prefixed on the name and keep them for my records as well.

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I agree, Matt. At first, I felt I didn't need Adobe Reader, and printed from Preview. But then I learned Adobe Reader on the Mac has lots of control over page sizes and scaling, even more than its Windows version (I had trouble finding an Arch D sheet Page Setup in a Windows Reader today).

Vectorworks users would probably tend to take varying sheet sizes for granted. I recall using different sheet sizes in Autocad, so it's a familiar thing to me, and is very useful. Perhaps someday Revit, too, will include multiple sheet sizes in a later version (2020 maybe?).

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Bob,

Yes. Adobe Reader is better for printing, IMO. Preview tends to want to scale the page to fit the page margins. Often times this scales a page down just enough where it's hard to notice that it's scaled - but it's surely not to scale. This obviously causes problems so I tell all of my clients to use Adobe Reader for printing. As for the Windows version of Reader, I'm not very familiar with it. I only print from the Mac.

Bryan,

I will now almost contradict myself from my statement above. :-)

A few of things I do like about Preview are:

1. I think it renders pages to the screen with better anti-aliasing of different line weights.

2. It allows you to easily crop pages. This gives you another way to easily print just a part of a drawing, and also for cropping PDF files that you plan to import to a VW drawing.

3. When you turn on the thumbnail page view, you can easily drag pages to the desktop to create separate files, and also drag PDF files from the desktop to add them to the PDF. Very convenient.

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Guest Wes Gardner

I like the idea of just scaling to produce half-size sets. It might be useful however to have an 8.5 x 11 with TB for creating Supplimental Sketches, RFIs and ASIs...

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Matt

Thanks for that - it is in fact what I'm doing already.

I make PDF's of each sheet within VW (via Print, which I think only Mac can do), export them to the job file, then email them direct to clients for them to take to a copy shop for printing. These PDF's open automatically with Adobe Reader not Preview.

The latest version of AR allows for adding a signature, which is a great idea.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi David,

Interesting idea about the signature. I'll have to have a look.

BTW: I'm not sure if VW Fundamentals has it, but I think all other flavors of VW have a Batch PDF Export in the File/Export menu. Something you may want to look into. just to clarify, The Export PDF commands in the Export menu are using (from what I understand) fully licensed Adobe PDF exporting. This should give you better quality and more options. Creating a PDF via the Print dialog, is using Apple's trimmed down version of PDF. That said, some users have better luck using one over the other. I typically use the Batch Export command but, if things don't turn out as I expect, I then try using the Print dialog method.

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