Resize Page for printing - D-Tools Forum

06-19-2008, 01:17 AM

Hey guys, I wanted to get some input from yall about printing. I generally use a 8.5 x 11 template because that is the page size we use. In my schematics however, the size of the drawing extends past the page size. What is you suggestion for resizing the drawing after I layout the schematic the way I want it. I can make the size of the items smaller by changing the font size but I find that typically makes it very difficult to read. I have also heard of selecting the whole schematic, pasting on a new page as a picture, then resizing that picture to fit, but the removes the ability to edit each item.

Any help would be appreciated!

Noah

Visio Guy · 06-19-2008, 07:05 PM

Hi Smarthomes,

I wouldn't typically recommend trying to make the shapes smaller: like you said, it just gets too icky with font sizes.

Sometimes changing the page scale can work, but it depends on how well the shapes are designed to work with scale. For instance, your shapes might get smaller, but the font sizes will stay the same. Also not good.

For schematics, I would just make the paper bigger. You can do this via the File > Page Setup > Page Size Tab dialog, When you go to print, you can choose to "Fit on 1 page across by 1 page down" (or other numbers of pages across and down)

Here's a few more tips:

Visio 2007 seems to remember different print settings for each page. I'm not 100% how thorough this is, and I can't remember what Visio 2003 does.
You can turn on page breaks under View > Page Breaks to see where your printer wants to tile the drawing. If you've correctly set up the "1 across by 1 down", then you won't see any page breaks--you've done it correctly!
Think about resizing the paper in integral increments, ie: 8.5 x 11 --> 12.75 x 16.5 --> 17 x 22 (all the same w/h ratio). This might help you keep things organized.
If you hold down the Ctrl key and mouse over the edge of the page in the drawing window, you'll see an arrow cursor. This means you can click-drag the page to any size you want!

Now, the Title Blocks are designed to handle arbitrary page sizes, but folks often customize the title blocks, so you might have slight problems there with your logo getting a bit out of whack. If that happens, come back and check with me...hmm I'm getting another idea for a Tool...