The normal menu items under the File menu which select Exports and Printing are similar to those in Punch, but simpler. There are more options, though, and they are determined in dialogs following the menu picks.
The print options hide behind a single menu pick, Print.... When it is first chosen the system will pop up the standard Windows Print Selection dialog, in which the printer is selected, and a few other options such as whether the output is to collated, the number of copies and whether the output is to go to a file. Normally it would also allow the user to determine the amount of the current document to be printed, but all of these options are grayed out except for All, which is chosen. We'll see why this is in a minute.
One important feature of this dialog is the button next to the printer selection labeled "Preferences". By pressing this button the user can access the features of the specifically chosen printer, and these will affect the actions in the printing later. Options here depend on the printer driver, but they often include landscape vs. portrait orientation, margin settings, paper size and other custom features. These three options in particular define a page as used later on in the printing process (see below).
After the Printer Selection dialog is released, the PlansPlus print dialog appears.
The PlansPlus print dialog has three sections. The first section has three choices for determining the scope of printing. The first, Print current selection, is enabled if a selection rectangle was drawn on the screen before the print process was started. If it is selected, then the size of the rectangle selected will determine the scale and center of the printout. The second selection is Print all in current plan, which sizes and centers considering all the objects shown on the plan in the Precision main window; even those objects that are off the screen. This is exactly what Punch! does with the "Print to One Page" option. The final selection is Print all on current screen, which uses the Precision screen as it is now to determine the scale and centering.
PlansPlus always prints full pages of data. If the selection rectangle ill-fits the page size, then the page will be drawn so that the center of the selection rectangle is at the center of the page, and the width of the rectangle matches the width of the page (or height matches height, whichever results in the least zoomed in content). The entire page is then printed, which may well include plan content above and below or to either side of the actual selection rectangle. The illustration on the right shows what will happen when a plan scoped to the visible screen is printed in portrait and landscape mode on a standard sheet of paper. Note that in this case the landscape printing fits the scope better and prints at a more magnified scale, but in either case more is printed than is visible in the scope.
Next to each option is a display window which shows the size of the selection in real-world measurement, either in inches or millimeters.
The next section determines the scale to be used to print the scope selected above. The first option is Print data on one page. This option sets the scale of the printout such that the scope selected above fits on a single page as defined by the printer. The second option, Print to scale, takes the opposite tack - using the print scale determined with the Scale dialog (described above), this method uses as many sheets of paper as required to print out the plan (this may be one or more sheets). Again, the definition of a sheet is taken from the printer definition, taking into account margins, orientation and paper size.
To the right of each selection in the Scale area is a display window showing the scale that will be used for printing, and a pairr below the options that shows the page size reported by the printer driver and the number of pages to be printed. For the Print to page method the scale will change as the scope changes, and the pages will always be "1 by 1". The scale on the Print to scale option is fixed by the Scale dialog, and the number of pages that will be required is displayed. For the user's convenience a button to summon the scale dialog is also present; note that the zoom section of the dialog is disabled, as zoom has no function in printing.
At the bottom of the PlansPlus print dialog is an entry box and a trio of checkboxes to round out the printing options. The edit box is labeled Line Thickness. Punch! lines are drawn as what are known as hairlines, lines of minimal (1 pixel) thickness, so they are precise as possible on the printed page. With today's modern printers printing at 600 and 1200 ink dots per inch, hairlines are often quite dim simply because they are so thin. If the user wants to have heavier lines printed, this option gives the means to do that. The nominal value 1 (or 0, which is, by convention the explicit hairline setting) prints hairlines, one pixel wide. Changing that to any value from two through twenty makes the line that thick. On my 600 dpi ink jet printer, the size 20 lines are about a millimeter thick. As with most other parameters, the line width setting is remembered and used thereafter until changed to something else.
The first checkbox is available when printing multiple pages - it causes registration crosses to be printed in red hairlines on each sheet which can be used to join the pages exactly. The second checkbox is used to force all the background areas on the plans to straight white while printing, instead of the very pale backgrounds used for display cueing purposes. This generally allows the plans to be printed much faster than would otherwise be the case. By default this option is selected. The last checkbox stipulates the printout is to be in black and white, without color. All colors on the print will be converted to black, so it's very advisable to use the no backgrounds option with this one.
PlansPlus and the contents of this help file are
Copyright©2006 by ThistleKeep Engineering; all rights are reserved.
Comments and suggestions, as well as support, are entertained at Lmc@ThistleKeep.com.
"Punch!" and other titles of Punch! operations are trademarks of Punch! Software L.L.C.