forum.datacad.com

Mark F. Madura wrote:

New_Batch_Printing_Setup_External.png

(External) Batch Printing Setup Dialog

Here's the 'External' Batch Printing Setup Dialog. The Master PDF Filename you set here will be the name of the document that contains the output from all of the files in the 'set'.

Will there be an option to save the print drawing set where a series of external files have been loaded? This would save having to reload all the various drawings again when updates are due for printing, instead just load the SET file. You might also consider allowing multiple SET files to store various drawings which would allow a building to be broken down into the various components as per the drawing register then each can be stored and loaded and re-loaded as required for each round of updates and printing.

Mark Bell wrote:Will there be an option to save the print drawing set where a series of external files have been loaded?

Hi Mark,

You can do this now. Once you've added the external files to batch print, you can select Save As... to create a '.SET' file which can be used to load previously selected files. For the enhanced version, I've expanded the SET file to include the state of the other dialog options so you won't have to re-set them each time you load a new SET file.

MFM

Mark F. Madura wrote:

Mark Bell wrote:Will there be an option to save the print drawing set where a series of external files have been loaded?

Hi Mark,

You can do this now. Once you've added the external files to batch print, you can select Save As... to create a '.SET' file which can be used to load previously selected files. For the enhanced version, I've expanded the SET file to include the state of the other dialog options so you won't have to re-set them each time you load a new SET file.

MFM

Thanks Mark - that's great as it will also allow multiple projects to be worked on with each plot list loaded for printing as required.

I saw the option to collate.. hurray!!!!! It is becoming less and less that I print, but when I do it seems to be multiple sets and this is going to save a lot of time. Thank you Mark!!!!

Question About Duplicate Names
The Batch Printing interface does not currently have any error checking for duplicate names. For example, the 'External' Batch Print Dialog allows you to load a SET file more than once, creating duplicate entries. If you're printing to PDF or PLT, files that are printed more than once will 'step' on previously saved files. I suppose if you're printing to a device, this would work, but why not just set Copies > 1?

Now that you'll be able to override the default naming convention; [Drawing Name-][Sheet ][Layout Name], there will be a greater opportunity to set the out filename to the same name in multiple files. If they are batch printed in the same session, the last layout printed will 'step' on the previous. Should this cause an error message?

It's possible to have duplicate GoTo View and MSP Sheet names. Should there be error handling for these conditions?

What about batch printing two drawings that have the same name, but are from different directories? The default output names would more likely be the same resulting in one of the files getting overwritten.

If you're diligent about names, you probably won't have any issues along these lines, but I'd like to get a better idea of what your expectation are.

Thank You,

MFM

While I might have similar drawing names, they all have the project number prefix, so I don't foresee having a duplicate name issue.

For those that might, couldn't you use a similar check that you have when inserting layers, a duplicate gets an (#) added to the end?

Will there be a way to drag order MSP between different drawings in the external batch plot dialog?
i.e.
Drawing 1 - Sheet A1.1
Drawing 2 - Sheet A1.2
Drawing 3 - Sheet A2.1
Drawing 2 - Sheet S1.1

Roger D wrote:Will there be a way to drag order MSP between different drawings in the external batch plot dialog?
i.e.
Drawing 1 - Sheet A1.1
Drawing 2 - Sheet A1.2
Drawing 3 - Sheet A2.1
Drawing 2 - Sheet S1.1

In this scenario, are you printing one sheet per drawing?

Roger D wrote:While I might have similar drawing names, they all have the project number prefix, so I don't foresee having a duplicate name issue.

For those that might, couldn't you use a similar check that you have when inserting layers, a duplicate gets an (#) added to the end?

I could certainly auto-increment filenames but you could end up with duplicates that have different names. Merged into a single PDF, there would be duplicate pages. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant to 'allow' this without a warning or to disallow it altogether.

Mark F. Madura wrote:

In this scenario, are you printing one sheet per drawing?[/quote]

No, you will note that Drawing 2, has both Sheet A1.2 and Sheet S1.1
In this project I have 4 drawing files, but 7 final sheets.
Also plotting to pdf files and combining into 1 final set.

Roger D wrote:

Mark F. Madura wrote:

In this scenario, are you printing one sheet per drawing?

No, you will note that Drawing 2, has both Sheet A1.2 and Sheet S1.1
In this project I have 4 drawing files, but 7 final sheets.
Also plotting to pdf files and combining into 1 final set.[/quote]
Ah, I see that now.
This feature won't be included in this round of enhancements but I'll ponder how I might implement it in a future update. In this version, you can certainly order the drawings, but the order of the sheets is determined by the order you set in the corresponding drawing.

We have many files with many sheet sizes.
In the DATACAD software on WINDOWS, you can only print on paper sizes that are predefined in the plotter's driver.
If you want to print more than five sizes of paper (CUSTOM), you need to exit DATACAD and manually change the paper sizes in the plotter driver.
I don't understand how in this situation it is possible to print BATCH PLOTTING without manual intervention.

This could only be done as in DATACAD DOS,
Because the PLTPCUSTX and PLTPCUSTY variables in DCALDOS were still useful. They were modifiable from the DATACAD software itself, and saved in each DC5 file. It is these variables that determined the paper size in the QUICK LAYOUT, and not the sheet size lists that appear in the plotter's driver.

It would be great if the paper sizes were set from within the DATACAD software itself,
And these will be passed directly to WINDOWS DEVMODE.

Adding external PDF files to batch printing would be an excellent feature for me. Especially so if it was order definable as can be set with GTVs. Inserting a PDF with the box checked would be wonderful. As Neil mentioned in his MSP desires, this feature/capability would save lots of inserting and rebuilding of drawing sets. Combined with the PDF merge... Wow!

ORWoody wrote:Adding external PDF files to batch printing would be an excellent feature for me. Especially so if it was order definable as can be set with GTVs. Inserting a PDF with the box checked would be wonderful. As Neil mentioned in his MSP desires, this feature/capability would save lots of inserting and rebuilding of drawing sets. Combined with the PDF merge... Wow!

As a work around you can use the Merge PDF option to collate all the various PDF's and have these in numerical or alphabetical order to create a 'master' PDF which you can then do a print from. You also use the PDF of all the drawings to refer back to later.