Once you get your layout complete with plan views and other items placed on it,
you will be ready to print.
Printing from a layout starts with a proper drawing sheet set up.
Let's start here with a blank layout file.
If you are setting up your own layout file,
the first thing you will need to do is set up how you want to print.
If we go to the file drop-down menu and select the print parent tool,
you'll find the drawing sheet set up tool. First,
we will want to set up the page orientation.
Portrait will create a page that is taller than it is wide.
Landscape will make the page wider than it is tall. In this case,
this is a landscape which is 36 inches wide and 24 inches tall.
When you click on the size drop-down,
you will see all of the standard paper sizes.
Select the one that will suit your printer.
You can create a custom page size. Click on custom.
Then to create your own, click on new. I'll name this 8 by 10,
change the width and length numbers,
and select inches or millimeters if you want to work in metrics.
This custom page will now be remembered in the Chief Architect program for
future use with different projects.
Drawing scale will usually stay at a 1 to 1 inch.
The paper size is true scale. When you send views to layout,
that's when you scale it down to the printable size.
If remember print settings after printing is checked,
it will record these settings and repopulate them the next time you go to print
a file, including which printer you want to use.
If I want to preset the printer, I will use specifically for this file,
I can un-check this box and click on choose.
This will give me the printer option.
Here you can see the printers and programs that are connected or installed on my
computer.
I'll cancel out of here and set it to remember the last setting I used when
printing. This is Chief Architect's PDF writer.
The program sees this just like a printer,
but it will save the print to a PDF file on my computer.
PDF files are a very common file type that almost any computer can read.
You can send them to your clients, consultants,
or to the print shop to generate printed copies.
Typically printers have a minimum margin around the perimeter that it will not
print outside of.
You can set your own or set it to populate from the printer you have chosen.
The PDF writer does not have set margins, so we will need to set our own.
I'll set this at 3/16 of an inch and copy it for all the sides.
You have the option to set your own line weights,
but typically we'll leave this as they are.
Once you finish the page setup, click OK.
The blue border line that you see here indicates the set margins.
Note that you cannot select these lines or edit them here.
You will need to open the drawing sheet set up again and make the changes.
Once you have the drawing sheet setup done,
you can then go to page zero to create your own borders and title block.
Page zero is your page template.
Everything that you place on this page will show up on all the other pages.
Please see additional videos for creating project layouts and layout templates.
I'll close this blank layout file and open my project layout.
As you can see here, I have created my own borders and title block.
If I go to the drawing sheet set up dialogue,
you can see that I have this set up to print a landscape 24 by 36 page and it is
set to use the Chief Architect save as PDF printer.
Now let's check out the pages that I have set up in this layout. As you can see,
I have 14 pages created and titled.
Note the page icon next to each page.
These indicate which page or pages are page templates,
which pages have something on them to print, or if they're blank pages.
This is important information for printing.
We can print the layout again by going to the file drop-down menu and then to
the print child tool or I can use the quick access tool here in my toolbar to
start the printing process.
Here I have the option to change the printer that we selected in the drawing
sheet set up. You can change the DPI setting,
but remember the higher the number here,
the longer it will take to generate a print.
You can also change the orientation and the size here to be different from the
settings in our drawing sheet set up.
Notice that if I change the print size to something smaller than the border size
that I have drawn,
that it will divide up each sheet to fit the new size setting.
You will also get a message in the feedback bar. To print properly,
these numbers should match the size settings in the drawing sheets set up
dialogue,
unless you select the fit to paper option here under drawing scale.
This is handy for quick check prints,
but remember that this will change the scaling of your drawings.
They will no longer be at the precise scale that you said.
When you send the plan views to the layout,
notice in the preview pane that the edge of my sheet is close to being cut off.
You can fix this by changing the fit size here.
Notice that each time I make a change in these settings that the preview pane
automatically updates. This can take up valuable time.
You can un-check the update automatically button if you want to update manually,
or if I make a change again and then hit escape during the update,
it will un-check the box for me and it will not update with the next change
until I click the update button. With the update automatically turned off,
I can make all of the setting changes quickly and then hit update when I'm ready
to see my preview. You can also select which pages you want to print.
Remember that some of my pages are page templates and some of my pages are blank
as indicated by the icon here in my project browser.
The printer will automatically list to print only those pages that are not
templates and that have something printable on them.
You can only print template pages and blank pages individually by typing in the
specific page number here.
You can get it to automatically list a blank page by simply drawing a small line
on that page. Notice that it's only listing page 1 through 10 here.
I'll cancel out of this print and then I'll draw a simple line here on page 12.
You can draw a line on top of another line if you don't want it to show up.
Then when we go back to print,
you can see that it is now listing pages 1 through 10 and page 12.
You can type in the specific pages that you want to print here under print
range. It is set now to print all pages.
If I only want to print pages 2, 4,
and 7 type in those numbers separated by commas.
If you want a specific page range, like pages 1, 2, 3,
and 4 type in 1 dash 4.
If you want to print the selected pages more than once,
you can change the number of copies here to print.
Now you can see that it is previewing two of each page.
When you have completed the settings as you need,
click on print if you are sending to a connected printer,
make sure the printer is connected properly, has the required paper installed,
and is turned on. If you are sending the print to a PDF file,
click on save as PDF.
That will open a browser where you can select where you want to save it.
I'll save mine to the desktop.