Printing Long Plots

[dennis]

Scenario:

Setup a sheet size 24 inches by 20 feet.  The part item view will then fit on this sheet 1:1.

Now send that to the roll feed printer to print out 1:1.

Experimenting around, we haven't been able to pull this off, though I do remember years ago doing it with AutoCAD.  In this case we are not working with AutoCAD, just the native IDW environment of Inventor.

Has anyone done this and if so how?  Or has some one tried and confirmed that it can't be done?

We know about "Tiling" but would like to produce the "Long Plot".

[Curtis_W]

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@dennis wrote:

Experimenting around, we haven't been able to pull this off...

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Hi @dennis ,

You might provide a bit more info about what happens/ doesn't happen when you try... do you get an error? Does the print just come out cut off at ___ length? Does the printer start smoking? Do ninjas drop from the ceiling and tie you to the chair, preventing you from hitting the OK button? Something else?  

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[swalton]

We have 6', and 10' long drawing templates just for that purpose. I don't think that my client has tried a 20' drawing yet. 

There may be a limitation between the 10' and 20' drawing size.

[dennis]

The PDFs, and the actual print previews to the printer, always end up showing only about 1/3 of the extents of the setup and that is of the middle section, not the left nor the right side.  So far, no daemons or spirits have been produced.

[Curtis_W]

@johnsonshiue , Do you know of any limitation here that would cause only the middle third of the print to show?  Thanks!

[dennis]

It has been odd in testing and trying this and that.  We tried making the paper twice as long, and the preview results were worse.  Reversed the logic and made it smaller and it just shifted the section previewed to the left.  I don't see any limitations on the printer side.

[Frederick_Law]

Depends on the printer driver.

Some time you need to create a custom sheet size in the driver and use that to print.

You might need a few inches extra.

Use the preview in printer could help to see if it works.

I think HP has its own popup preview before print.

[Curtis_W]

Just trying to help clarify...

....Are you making the paper size larger by going to the Printer properties , as shown here ?  Or doing something else?

(ignore my printer choice, I have no printers installed on this machine) 

[dennis]

yes...exactly the same forms.  We have tried Adobe PDF and the printer properties itself.

[dennis · Accepted solution]

Ok.  We finally got something to work.

We printed to our PDF driver, using Postscript setup for the paper size.  The generated PDF looks right, which is the first time we actually got the PDF to do as expected.

We sent the pdf to the printer and out it came.