Printing A2 layout design

[Giles Gemmill]

I am trying to print out an A2 size of my layout designs and am getting two halves of my plan. I have checked the Document set up; page set up menus to set this layout as A2 but keep getting two half pages and portrait image of my plan. As you can imagine it is getting frustrated to get this right so that my printer can print it out as an A2 format. I have also noticed that emailing the file is too big occussionly 25MB.

 

Your recommendation and tips would be much appreciated. 

 

Thank you.

 

Giles 

[Boh]

In the page set up dialogue there is an option for page output (or something like that). I set mine to “one printer page”. The number of pages on the left side of the dialogue should revert to 1 horiz and 1vert. Dialogue might be slightly different on a Mac than pc (I use PC). 

[Pat Stanford]

It is likely that while the paper is set to A2, it is probably also set to Portrait instead of Landscape (or the other way around so 2 pages are required to fit the image.

 

If you turn on the page boundary and page breaks in the check boxes at the left of the Page Setup dialog box you should be able to see what is happening in the preview.

[Pernille]

We have the same problem, all our templates are set up to A3 but when we print it Vectorworks automatically changes the page to A4. 
We can't find a way arround it, except export it as a PDF and then print out the PDF. 

We have tried to contact VectorWorks about this, but they couldn't find a solution either. 😞 

[Boh]

Could you post a file. Happy to take a look.

[Pernille]

On 7/2/2021 at 9:56 PM, Boh said:

Could you post a file. Happy to take a look.

Here are to files made quickely. Bothe are set up to be in A3, however if you print it the program changes it to A4. The first file is how the PDF looks like when you print it, the second file is how it should look like.

Untitled1.pdf Untitled2.pdf

[Boh]

17 hours ago, Pernille said:

Here are to files made quickely.

Can you post the VW file?

[Pernille]

It dosen't matter which file I use. This happens to all filles when I work in Vectorworks 2021. 

I have even tried to make a new file from the premade templates from Vectorworks, and they all come out this way.
I have here a VW file where I have made a PDF from.

test template premadefrom Vectorworks.pdf test template premadefrom Vectorworks.vwx

[Boh]

Hey @Pernille

I couldn't reproduce what you are getting from the files you posted.

 

When I set the page set up to A3 landscape I managed to print an A3 landscape hardcopy as it should have.

The only issue I found is when I print A3 landscape to Adobe pdf it changes to A4 portrait. But I never use print to pdf I always use export or publish to pdf where I don't get this issue.

 

Is this happening just on your vectorworks? Are others having the same problem.

 

There is a new service pack available for vw2021. Have you upgraded to that yet?

 

Did vectorworks tech support suggest anything? I would think they might suggest a reinstall.

[Pat Stanford]

Check your printer driver for a setting for margins.  I could not reproduce what you are seeing, but when I selected one of my printers, the very left edge of the circle was off the printable page and was slightly trimmed. It could be that you printer is set to very large margins.

[Pernille]

9 hours ago, Boh said:

Hey @Pernille

I couldn't reproduce what you are getting from the files you posted.

 

When I set the page set up to A3 landscape I managed to print an A3 landscape hardcopy as it should have.

The only issue I found is when I print A3 landscape to Adobe pdf it changes to A4 portrait. But I never use print to pdf I always use export or publish to pdf where I don't get this issue.

 

Is this happening just on your vectorworks? Are others having the same problem.

 

There is a new service pack available for vw2021. Have you upgraded to that yet?

 

Did vectorworks tech support suggest anything? I would think they might suggest a reinstall.

 

Yes you are absolutely right. We have made an Adobe PDF setup that is key to the dessigns color settings. so it is nessesarry for us to use this funktion. And it is a funktion that we have been able to use in older versions of Vectorworks.  But it also means that we aren't able to print anything in any size directly from Vectorworks? Because it keeps changeing the size to A4.

When we reinstall it or set up a new PC with Vectorworks we have this problem every time. Eventhough we have all the newest servicepacks.

 

It only occures when using Vectorworks, in AutoCad and all other programs we don't have the issue. 

We have even tried to take to PC's and check the different settings next to eachotter, but we can't find any differences. 

 

We have tried contacting our service support, however we haven't heard anything back from him. Now we have just tried to go straight to Vectorworks, so we are waiting on a reply. 

[Pernille]

9 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

Check your printer driver for a setting for margins.  I could not reproduce what you are seeing, but when I selected one of my printers, the very left edge of the circle was off the printable page and was slightly trimmed. It could be that you printer is set to very large margins.

 

When we check the printer margin it should have the same setup on all pc's. And on one PC we have both Vectorworks 2020 and 2021, on 2020 I can print as it should be, but in 2021 it keeps on changeing the size back to A4. And it only happens in Vectorworks. 

[Art V]

2 hours ago, Pernille said:

When we check the printer margin it should have the same setup on all pc's. And on one PC we have both Vectorworks 2020 and 2021, on 2020 I can print as it should be, but in 2021 it keeps on changeing the size back to A4. And it only happens in Vectorworks. 

If the settings are the same as in VW 2020 then it looks there might be a bug in Vectorworks 2021.

 

I noticed that the viewport boundary of your test file is beyond the page boundary, does it still happen when the viewport boundary is aligned with the page boundary or smaller than the page boundary? I tend to avoid the viewport boundary being larger than the page boundary as it may cause some issues with other software when exchanging files and trying to set up pages in there. It is unlikely that it would cause the page to be printed at A4 instead of A3 though.

[Art V]

A question, when printing the file are you printing to a printer with multiple trays for different paper sizes? If yes could it be that VW2021 somehow selects a tray that is holding A4 paper?

[Pernille]

3 hours ago, Art V said:

If the settings are the same as in VW 2020 then it looks there might be a bug in Vectorworks 2021.

 

I noticed that the viewport boundary of your test file is beyond the page boundary, does it still happen when the viewport boundary is aligned with the page boundary or smaller than the page boundary? I tend to avoid the viewport boundary being larger than the page boundary as it may cause some issues with other software when exchanging files and trying to set up pages in there. It is unlikely that it would cause the page to be printed at A4 instead of A3 though.

 

I have also made it with a viewport that is smaler than the area and with multipel viewports, also with Viewports that are fit perfectly to the area. still with the same issue. 

Regarding the printer, we have tryed printing to different printers and especally Adobe PDF, but with the same ressult. 

[Pat Stanford]

Do you have a different machine with VW installed? What happens if you try to print from that machine?

 

If you don't have a different machine (or just want to test for a corrupted user folder/preferences) create a new user account on the computer and launch VW from there and see if it will print correctly. If it does, then the first step would be to use the Reset button in the VW Preferences and see if that is enough to fix the problem. If that does not work, then quite VW, drag the entire User Folder to your desktop, and restart VW. That will recreate the user folder. If that solves the problem, then you know it is a problem in the user folder.

 

The next step after that would be to go through and delete all preferences files with names containing Vectorworks or Nemetschek manually. Caution, if you do this you will need to re-enter your serial number so make sure you have it before proceeding. Ask again and we can help tell you where to look.

 

By the way, please add a signature to your account with your computer hardware, operating system, and VW version(s). It makes it easier for us to help you.

[Pernille]

We have serval different machines where it is installed on, and it is a problem that happens on all of them. We have also just started two new laptops up using Vectorworks, one of them where we mad a compleetly new startup with no premade or saved installations. (it is my pc, wiht the informations in my signature.) But this problem happens on all our pc's when me install a new Version of Vectorworks. 

[Pat Stanford]

I am on Mac, so I am out of possibilities. The only other thing I can think of is to make sure you have the most current printer driver.

 

I read almost everything on the Forum, and have not seen anyone else talking about a problem like this. That does not mean it is not a VW issue, but it does at least hint that there is something special about your setup that is different than other users.

 

Good luck. I will keep following this thread. Perhaps this would be better directed to VW tech support as maybe they have seen the issue somewhere.