Print Styles

I have been using V8i since the first beta release (Athens).  Now that it's an official release I want to get everything set up for my users.  I've already done some configuration stuff and now I am working on the Print Orginizer.  I have dabbled with it during the beta trials but not too in depth as I seemed to be always running into some sort of issue with it.  Has anybody else been having problems with it, particularly with Print Styles?  When I am defining a Print Style and I've set the printer and/or pltcfg file, the sheet sizes do not show up in the drop down for the main tab.  I save that step for last but it still doesn't work.  Any ideas?

John K.

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  • I believe the paper size list in the print style dialog's Main tab is obtained from the printer associated with the active print set and is provided for convenience only.  You're free to type in any paper size name you like.

    I agree if would be nice if the paper size list was reconstructed whenever you specified a printer driver configuration file and/or Windows printer name in the print style Printer tab.  I will log a change request for that feature.

     

          
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  • Thank you Andrew.  I was just about to post here as I had just stumbled across that.  I guess I'm still a little confused as far as the Print Orginizer workflow goes.  Should I be creating separate network pset files for each printer or plotter that we have or just one with multiple Print Styles in it??

    John K.

  • I'm not sure I follow the question.  When you say, "just one with multiple Print Styles in it", does "it" refer to a printer driver configuration file?  If so, then you don't have a choice.  A printer driver configuration may contain only a single print style.
     
    The workflow that makes the most sense to me is to have a separate printer driver configuration for each printer that you use.  You may or may not wish to associate a print style with each configuration; it depends on whether you need to automate anything that the ..pltcfg doesn't already have support for.
     
    I see a typical setup perhaps having a site-wide default print style in a common .dgnlib with very basic settings like auto-center and maximize, as well as another default print style in each project ..dgnlib.  The pen table file might be defined in the project ..dgnlib or the site .dgnlib, depending on how standardized the pen table is across multiple projects.  Your site or project default print style might also contain the recipe for setting the print area from a shape or cell border, if you're not using sheet definitions.  If you never wish to print construction elements, or wish to always disable printing of broken association symbology, the site- or project-level default print style is a good place to put that.
     
    You may want to have one print style for each printer you use, although I'm not sure what uses customers will find for printer-level print styles at the present time.  The printer driver configuration file already has a lot of automation capabilities built into it; I have a hard time coming up with a realistic example of a print definition property that you would want to automatically set, that can't already be specified in a .pltcfg file.
     
    The printer driver configuration file, having been around for quite a while, is already a blend of properties that are truly relevant to the printer and properties that have nothing to do with the printer and instead were added for automation purposes.  The pen table record is a good example of this.  MicroStation will continue to support all those automation properties in .pltcfg files, but in the future as new print definition properties are invented, likely the only way to automate them will be to use a print style.
     
    An example of something in MicroStation V8i that can only be automated via a print style is the Mirror property.  This is a contrived example, but say you had a particular printer to which you wished to print mirrored every time.  The only way to do that in MicroStation V8 XM was to define a macro using the print mirror keyin.  In MicroStation V8i, you could define a non-default print style containing the desired mirror value and specify that print style name in the printer driver configuration.  Whenever the printer driver configuration is loaded, the mirror property would be set in the print definition.
     
    If you haven't seen it, I wrote a blog article about print styles that tries to cover some of this.
     

          
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  • Thanks Andrew, I just went through your article quickly.  When I was refereing to"it" I guess I meant a dgnlib or pset file.  My situation is that we would not have multiple project specific dgnlib/print styles.  We would have multiple plotters and printers and each of those would have mulitple sheet sizes both mono and color.  I have already set up all of the pltcfg files quite a while back for XM.  These work fine for the most part.  I had also set up quite a few batch plot 'templates' (.job files)for different plotters, sizes, etc.  In these all of the proper specifications were pointed to our batchplt.spc file(Printer; PlotArea; Layout and Display).  I guess I'm just not too sure if I should recreate all of these as pset files or print styles?  I know that pltcfg files have not been superceeded in the V8i release but has the batchplt.spc been replaced by Print Styles?  I'm going to go through your article in more detail now so maybe I'll see the light after that.

    John K.

Reply
  • Thanks Andrew, I just went through your article quickly.  When I was refereing to"it" I guess I meant a dgnlib or pset file.  My situation is that we would not have multiple project specific dgnlib/print styles.  We would have multiple plotters and printers and each of those would have mulitple sheet sizes both mono and color.  I have already set up all of the pltcfg files quite a while back for XM.  These work fine for the most part.  I had also set up quite a few batch plot 'templates' (.job files)for different plotters, sizes, etc.  In these all of the proper specifications were pointed to our batchplt.spc file(Printer; PlotArea; Layout and Display).  I guess I'm just not too sure if I should recreate all of these as pset files or print styles?  I know that pltcfg files have not been superceeded in the V8i release but has the batchplt.spc been replaced by Print Styles?  I'm going to go through your article in more detail now so maybe I'll see the light after that.

    John K.

Children
  • I understand.  Yes, print styles are the conceptual equivalent to the Batch Print specifications.  To continue following your Batch Print workflow in Print Organizer, you'll want to create at least one print style in a ..dgnlib.  The batchplt.spc file is not used by Print Organizer, is only still delivered for legacy Batch Print support.
     
    Like a design library, Batch Print's batchplt.spc file was a shared global resource in the workspace.  It was possible (and probably desirable) to have a separate batchplt.spc file for each project, but I don't know how common that was.  More likely, there was only one batchplt.spc for each MicroStation installation (or a shared batchplt.spc on a network drive).  To duplicate that, you can create a custom .dgnlib and put it in your site-wide, system-level workspace configuration, or create print styles in a .dgnlib that's already serving in that role.
     
    A Batch Print .job file referenced 4 different specifications stored in batchplt.spc: the printer, the print area, the print layout, and the print display settings.  All of those different specification types may be combined into a single print style if you wish.  So if your batchplt.spc consisted only of 4 specifications, one for each type, you will only need one print style.
     
    Over the weekend I wrote another blog article that hopefully will assist the transition from Batch Print to Print Organizer:
     
     
     
    "jkknighton" wrote in message news:19178@communities.bentley.com...

    Thanks Andrew, I just went through your article quickly.  When I was refereing to"it" I guess I meant a dgnlib or pset file.  My situation is that we would not have multiple project specific dgnlib/print styles.  We would have multiple plotters and printers and each of those would have mulitple sheet sizes both mono and color.  I have already set up all of the pltcfg files quite a while back for XM.  These work fine for the most part.  I had also set up quite a few batch plot 'templates' (.job files)for different plotters, sizes, etc.  In these all of the proper specifications were pointed to our batchplt.spc file(Printer; PlotArea; Layout and Display).  I guess I'm just not too sure if I should recreate all of these as pset files or print styles?  I know that pltcfg files have not been superceeded in the V8i release but has the batchplt.spc been replaced by Print Styles?  I'm going to go through your article in more detail now so maybe I'll see the light after that.

    John K.



    http://communities.bentley.com/Products/MicroStation/MicroStation_V8i/MicroStation_V8i_Printing/f/19568/t/11204.aspx#19178

          
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  • Thanks Andrew, that helps clarify things.  I wasn't able to follow the link to your new article though.  I'll try again in a bit.
  • The blog section of BE Communities website has been up and down all day.  Also, many people have found that the screenshots in some my article do not always appear.  I suspect the traffic on the site is responsible for that.
     
    When I have a chance, I'm going to try to create a PDF for my entire blog and post it to my Files section.
     

          
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  • Thanks again Andrew.  I was able to get to your blog post eventually and it was very helpful.  The issue that I have is that there still doesn't seem to be any way to allow the user to selct one thing in order to have everything automatically set up for them.  For example; if you select a print style from the drop down on the single print dialog, it should set everything that you have set up in that print style.  It does set some of the stuff but not all.  It doesn't change the sheet size or pltcfg file but it does change the pen table and the plot area.  Do I have to create separate pltcfg files for each sheet size?  That doesn't seem logical since the pltcfg file would be a common denominator as far as settings go.  If I create a 'template' pset file and specify a plot style in that pset, it should apply that plot style to any drawing you add to it but it doesn't.  You have to again specifically specify a plot style to the drawings you've added.  We need a one-stop-shop for printing, both batch and single.

    John K.

  • Print styles aren't "sticky" in that manner.  The philosophy behind print styles is that they act as commands or macros to initialize the print definitions as they are created, and that the print definitions may then be modified as you see fit.  The names of the print styles that have been applied to print definitions are not persisted in either the print definitions or the print set.  Thus, it doesn't make sense to try to set up a "template" print set as you describe.
     
    If you create a default print style in your design library that specifies a printer driver configuration file, then Print Organizer should load that .pltcfg whenever it creates a new print set.  However, when a print style is applied manually, the printer driver configuration cannot be applied.  This is because Print Organizer does not support printing to multiple printers, and won't perform an operation that you intended for one print definition that would have side effects of all the other print definitions in the set.
     
    Not sure about the paper size.  I'm not aware of any conditions in which a paper size specified in a print style would not honored, as long as the paper size was valid for the printer driver configuration associated with the print set.  That was one of the actions I included in the print style tutorial I wrote, and it worked as expected.
     
    It should be possible to configure your workspace such that Print Organizer automatically selects the proper printer driver configuration when it comes up (thanks to either a default print style or the configuration variables that exist for that purpose), and you should be able to drop design files into Print Organizer and have the desired paper size and print scale be selected automatically (thanks to either sheet definitions or a default print style, depending on your workflow).  You certainly don't need a separate .pltcfg file for each paper size.  I think you may be heading in the wrong direction with the idea of a template print set.
     
    "jkknighton" wrote in message news:19383@communities.bentley.com...

    Thanks again Andrew.  I was able to get to your blog post eventually and it was very helpful.  The issue that I have is that there still doesn't seem to be any way to allow the user to selct one thing in order to have everything automatically set up for them.  For example; if you select a print style from the drop down on the single print dialog, it should set everything that you have set up in that print style.  It does set some of the stuff but not all.  It doesn't change the sheet size or pltcfg file but it does change the pen table and the plot area.  Do I have to create separate pltcfg files for each sheet size?  That doesn't seem logical since the pltcfg file would be a common denominator as far as settings go.  If I create a 'template' pset file and specify a plot style in that pset, it should apply that plot style to any drawing you add to it but it doesn't.  You have to again specifically specify a plot style to the drawings you've added.  We need a one-stop-shop for printing, both batch and single.

    John K.



    http://communities.bentley.com/Products/MicroStation/MicroStation_V8i/MicroStation_V8i_Printing/f/19568/t/11204.aspx#19383

          
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