visio printing

[Kaie vandoorn]

how do I scale charts to print on a plotter. eg. - i want set my page to
print 42' hieght and then allow it run as long as it needs?

Thanks

 

[ApexTom]

As far as I can tell, Windows itself can't comprehend the concept of a page
as having a specified width and an arbitrary length. But when you have a
plotter, that is exactly what you want. Adding extra difficulty, every
application--even different applications within Microsoft Office--treat pages
very differently.

We have an Hewlett Packard DesignJet 500 42-inch plotter and Visio 2003. It
took a lot of experimenting before we came up with practices to get them to
play nicely together. (The experimentation is especially frustrating because
HP doesn't include a Page Preview mode for their $3000 printers, while their
$50 printers all seem to have it. Prepare to waste a lot of paper, which is
perhaps why HP *doesn't* provide a page preview--perhaps they hope you'll buy
and waste HP brand paper.)

To start with, I create a page that's exceedingly long--in my case generally
24x72 or 36x108 inches in the printer configuration as a "Custom" size.
Don't worry about the excess length--you can use the plotter setup to
automatically truncate the excess. For HP, this is found by starting on the
Visio File menu and going Print->Properties->Advanced Paper Settings and
checking the "Save roll paper" box.

Then in Visio, on the Page Setup, on the Page Size tab, I use the "Size to
fit drawing contents" setting. (It doesn't automatically update this if you
create new objects off the page, or remove objects so that there is
whitespace on one or more edges. In order to REsize to fit drawing contents,
you have to click to custom size and then back to Size to fit drawing
contents, then close again.) When you do this, the Visio page size is
automatically closely cropped to the drawing. (Again, Visio and HP conspire
to make this difficult, and I've found that I usually have to put invisible
white boxes at the top of the diagram to prevent HP's driver from chopping
content off the diagram.) *

THEN when you want to print, go to the Print menu and select the printer and
click "Close". Then on the Page Setup menu select the over-long custom size
you created, and under "Print zoon" select "Fit to 1 sheet(s) across" and "by
1 sheet(s) down". Confirm that the Portrait/Landscape setting is correct in
the little graphic pane to the right. (Note that there's a silly bug in
Visio sometimes that you have to click on the word "Portrait" to select the
"Landscape" radio button, and vice-versa. It's infuriating until you
understand the bug.) In that pane showing the drawing page relative to the
printer paper, you will see a hashed area showing the excess length--don't
worry about this as long as you chose the "Save roll paper" option above,
because it will be automatically truncated.

* Unfortunately, when you size your Visio page to fit your drawing, Visio
will automatically de-align everything from the grid. Even if you create a
big box around everything that is exactly on the grid before you resize the
page, Visio will STILL move everything off the grid when you resize the page.
The workaround is to:
1) Zoom to 400% (maximum)
2) select everything (control-A)
3) move the drawing contents so they're back on the grid. When you have
just a few items on the page, a quick click of the arrow keys in each
direction is usually enough. Once you have many items, you will invariably
have to click many more times to align everything back with the grid in each
dimension.

It's not easy, but it is the way Microsoft and HP have conspired to make
things. We find that having huge technical Visio diagrams is worth this
significant effort, however.

Happy drawing,

-Tom

 

[Kaie vandoorn]

Thank you was very helpful.

Kaie

As far as I can tell, Windows itself can't comprehend the concept of a page
as having a specified width and an arbitrary length. But when you have a
plotter, that is exactly what you want. Adding extra difficulty, every
application--even different applications within Microsoft Office--treat pages
very differently.

We have an Hewlett Packard DesignJet 500 42-inch plotter and Visio 2003. It
took a lot of experimenting before we came up with practices to get them to
play nicely together. (The experimentation is especially frustrating because
HP doesn't include a Page Preview mode for their $3000 printers, while their
$50 printers all seem to have it. Prepare to waste a lot of paper, which is
perhaps why HP *doesn't* provide a page preview--perhaps they hope you'll buy
and waste HP brand paper.)

To start with, I create a page that's exceedingly long--in my case generally
24x72 or 36x108 inches in the printer configuration as a "Custom" size.
Don't worry about the excess length--you can use the plotter setup to
automatically truncate the excess. For HP, this is found by starting on the
Visio File menu and going Print->Properties->Advanced Paper Settings and
checking the "Save roll paper" box.

Then in Visio, on the Page Setup, on the Page Size tab, I use the "Size to
fit drawing contents" setting. (It doesn't automatically update this if you
create new objects off the page, or remove objects so that there is
whitespace on one or more edges. In order to REsize to fit drawing contents,
you have to click to custom size and then back to Size to fit drawing
contents, then close again.) When you do this, the Visio page size is
automatically closely cropped to the drawing. (Again, Visio and HP conspire
to make this difficult, and I've found that I usually have to put invisible
white boxes at the top of the diagram to prevent HP's driver from chopping
content off the diagram.) *

THEN when you want to print, go to the Print menu and select the printer and
click "Close". Then on the Page Setup menu select the over-long custom size
you created, and under "Print zoon" select "Fit to 1 sheet(s) across" and "by
1 sheet(s) down". Confirm that the Portrait/Landscape setting is correct in
the little graphic pane to the right. (Note that there's a silly bug in
Visio sometimes that you have to click on the word "Portrait" to select the
"Landscape" radio button, and vice-versa. It's infuriating until you
understand the bug.) In that pane showing the drawing page relative to the
printer paper, you will see a hashed area showing the excess length--don't
worry about this as long as you chose the "Save roll paper" option above,
because it will be automatically truncated.

* Unfortunately, when you size your Visio page to fit your drawing, Visio
will automatically de-align everything from the grid. Even if you create a
big box around everything that is exactly on the grid before you resize the
page, Visio will STILL move everything off the grid when you resize the page.
The workaround is to:
1) Zoom to 400% (maximum)
2) select everything (control-A)
3) move the drawing contents so they're back on the grid. When you have
just a few items on the page, a quick click of the arrow keys in each
direction is usually enough. Once you have many items, you will invariably
have to click many more times to align everything back with the grid in each
dimension.

It's not easy, but it is the way Microsoft and HP have conspired to make
things. We find that having huge technical Visio diagrams is worth this
significant effort, however.

Happy drawing,

-Tom