At the drawing board...

Ok, this one won't be interesting but it's very important!

Instructions for printing Solidworks to Designjet plotter.  New Best practice.

• Spent 3 hours figuring out how to make high quality blueprints from Solidworks.  It's important because I found a new PDF printer that allows custom page sizes (hopefully to work directly from PDF to the designjet plotter!
• Process: 
• In Solidworks, make the drawing paper size match the size printer (I'm using 48"x36" and 60"x36").
• In doPDF, the print driver, set the page size.  I developed a multi-step process to make it work, see below.
• Copy the pdf file to the laptop and go out to the shed and print!  Wahoo!  Hopefully I have enough paper left.  It's 6 pages of 60" (30 ft) plus 17 pages of 48" (68ft).

Here's my round-about process to make doPDF work right in solidworks printing:
Printing Blueprints from SOLIDWORKS:



• In the drawing creation, make the sheet full sized – 36” x 48”, 36”x60” etc.
• The program doPDF v7 which is similar to CutePDF allows you to make custom sizes – very nice!
• In Solidworks:
1. File, Print.  In the dialog, choose the doPDF printer then click Properties.
2. Set units to inches then Custom size to match page in Solidworks (48”x36”).
3. Back in the Print dialog, click Page Setup. Set the paper size to Custom.  Click Ok.
4. Back in the print dialog, go back to the doPDF properties and reset the page size to 48x36.
5. Print Preview
6. Finish up.

Ok.  That's the boring stuff!