Print your designs (EVEN FULL SCALE!)
Have you ever needed to print your 2D or 3D designs in Vectric software? Or what about printing them in full-scale? This video will show you how to do all of that with some very simple tricks! This lesson applies to Vectric VCarve, Aspire, and Cut2D.
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Video Transcript:
In this lesson, we're going to look at how to print projects, as well as print projects in full scale. So we're going to start off with Vectric print options, which to be honest, are lacking some capabilities and I'll show you why. So we're going to use the project that we were working on in the SketchUp import lesson.
So this is our top side and front view of a base cabinet and to print projects, you can go to file. And then come down and you'll see Print, Print Preview, and Print Setup. So if you go to Print Setup first, you can select your printer and set up the properties, as well as select the paper size and orientation.
And once you have that all set up, click OK. And then I highly recommend going to file and clicking print preview before you ever print from Vectric because when you click print preview, you're going to see exactly what the sheet of paper will look like. And you can see in this case, it is zoomed out very far.
So you may want to zoom in a little bit closer to be able to use up more of the piece of paper. And you can also see it will always print the border of your project. And then you can either print by clicking the print button up here in the top left, or if you want to make some changes, click close. And now you can zoom in a little bit closer and change your position and then click file print preview.
And now you can see it got a little bit bigger because we zoomed in. So this is some of the features I was saying that Vectric lacks for printing is it's very hard to get the exact view that you want to print it exactly the way you want it. So you basically you have to keep playing around with this zooming in a little bit closer and clicking file print preview and you'll see it'll get bigger every time.
So this is starting to look pretty good. I'd probably end up printing it at this point here by clicking the print button. And then once you click that, it will print out your project just the way you see it here. Okay. So that's one way to print it. I'm going to show you a better way to do this in a second here.
Let's close this. And another option you have for printing is the 3d view. So you can see in the 3d view, I have a component from the clip art library. And what you could do is you can rotate your view if you'd like any way you like, and then click file. And click print preview again. And you could see whatever view you're looking at, that's the way it's going to print.
And by default to save on printer ink, it's going to remove the shaded background. You could turn that feature back on if you wanted to print that. I'll show you how to do that as well. But you can also see it's printing the modeling plane. So you may not want to print that. So you can click close. And then go to view.
And click draw modeling plane to turn that off. And you may also want to turn off the origin if that's showing so you can go to view, click draw origin. That will turn that off as well. Now you're just going to see the model by itself, and then you can go to file print preview. And now you can see it's just printing the 3D model.
And then like I said, you can turn on the shaded background by first closing this preview, and then going up to edit, going to options, and then in the 3D view settings, you can change the color of the background if you wanted to. You can also upload your own custom image if you wanted to use an image background.
Let's say you wanted to add your logo or something in the background. You could do that, but in order to print the background right here, where it says print 3d view shaded background, you want to change it from no to yes, and then click okay. And now when you go to file, Print preview, you could see it's going to include the background, but just keep in mind that will use up some more ink, of course.
Okay. So that's all the standard printing options. I'm going to show you some tricks that you can use to print in full scale, as well as customizing your view a little bit better. So to start, let's see what we could do to print this full scale. And if we were to select all of this, we could see the size of it by looking at the bottom here.
And right now it's about 61 by 70 inches. So you can see that's pretty large, but there may be sometimes you want to print a project full scale, maybe as a template or just to see if it's going to fit before you cut it. So to do that, what you can do is go to file, then come down to export and we're going to export it as a PDF document.
And in this case, I'm going to export all the vectors and on sheet one, and we don't need to export the job bounds. So with all that selected, I'm going to click export, and then we can give it a name. I'll just keep it as new and click save. Now if I were to open that file up, and this is in the Adobe PDF viewer.
I'm going to make this to one full page, and you can see the design has exported as a single page, but this page is really large right now. So you can either click print and scale it down by clicking fit, and that will fit it in a single sheet, which you could see will look much better than the options we were using to print it in Vectric.
So this will fill in the page much easier. But if you wanted to print it full scale, what you can do is click poster and make sure the scaling is set to 100%. And now that's going to print out multiple sheets to be able to put this together, as one big full scale image. And another thing you could do is you can click cut marks as well as labels.
And that will place marks and labels on all of these sheets. So it's a little bit easier to put them together and you can control the overlap of the sheets by this number right here. And then you can also specify portrait or landscape if you wanted to rotate the sheets. So as you can see, this design right here would print out in 90 pages.
Which actually it looks like a lot of these are wasted. So you may be able to do some editing to get that page count down quite a bit. But once you print this out, you can tape all the sheets together using the labels and cut marks, and then you'll have one big sheet of the full size image. So that's how you can print in full scale.
Now I'm going to show you one last trick inside of that trick. What you can do is scale down your job size to be exactly the size of your piece of paper. So if you're using standard letter size piece of paper, that would be eight and a half by 11. And then we're going to click OK. The thickness doesn't really matter in this case.
And then what I'm going to do is take the entire design and scale that down to fit inside of that new sheet. And then you can also move the parts around to be wherever you want them. And then as you see in this job right here is going to be exactly how it's going to look on your piece of paper. So if we orientate it just like that and then go to file and we're going to export it as a PDF again.
And we can use the same settings and click export. And then I'll just name this one number two and click save. And now I'll open that one up. And if we zoom out to see one full page, you could see it's going to be exactly how we orientated it in Vectric. And now when we click print, since we made it the size of the paper, It's going to look exactly how it looked in Vectric when we go to print it out.
Now just keep in mind, this will not be full scale, but it will look much better in a single sheet of paper. So those are several different tips for printing your projects. If you have any questions on those, just let me know. That's all for this video. Make sure you like and subscribe for more. And if you want to master your Vectric software, Make sure you check out my Vectric training classes linked right here, where we go much more in depth how to use the Vectric software step by step.
And included with my training courses is weekly Q&A calls where I can answer your questions one on one and get the support you need. And if you want to watch another great Vectric tip, check out this video posted right here.
So this is our top side and front view of a base cabinet and to print projects, you can go to file. And then come down and you'll see Print, Print Preview, and Print Setup. So if you go to Print Setup first, you can select your printer and set up the properties, as well as select the paper size and orientation.
And once you have that all set up, click OK. And then I highly recommend going to file and clicking print preview before you ever print from Vectric because when you click print preview, you're going to see exactly what the sheet of paper will look like. And you can see in this case, it is zoomed out very far.
So you may want to zoom in a little bit closer to be able to use up more of the piece of paper. And you can also see it will always print the border of your project. And then you can either print by clicking the print button up here in the top left, or if you want to make some changes, click close. And now you can zoom in a little bit closer and change your position and then click file print preview.
And now you can see it got a little bit bigger because we zoomed in. So this is some of the features I was saying that Vectric lacks for printing is it's very hard to get the exact view that you want to print it exactly the way you want it. So you basically you have to keep playing around with this zooming in a little bit closer and clicking file print preview and you'll see it'll get bigger every time.
So this is starting to look pretty good. I'd probably end up printing it at this point here by clicking the print button. And then once you click that, it will print out your project just the way you see it here. Okay. So that's one way to print it. I'm going to show you a better way to do this in a second here.
Let's close this. And another option you have for printing is the 3d view. So you can see in the 3d view, I have a component from the clip art library. And what you could do is you can rotate your view if you'd like any way you like, and then click file. And click print preview again. And you could see whatever view you're looking at, that's the way it's going to print.
And by default to save on printer ink, it's going to remove the shaded background. You could turn that feature back on if you wanted to print that. I'll show you how to do that as well. But you can also see it's printing the modeling plane. So you may not want to print that. So you can click close. And then go to view.
And click draw modeling plane to turn that off. And you may also want to turn off the origin if that's showing so you can go to view, click draw origin. That will turn that off as well. Now you're just going to see the model by itself, and then you can go to file print preview. And now you can see it's just printing the 3D model.
And then like I said, you can turn on the shaded background by first closing this preview, and then going up to edit, going to options, and then in the 3D view settings, you can change the color of the background if you wanted to. You can also upload your own custom image if you wanted to use an image background.
Let's say you wanted to add your logo or something in the background. You could do that, but in order to print the background right here, where it says print 3d view shaded background, you want to change it from no to yes, and then click okay. And now when you go to file, Print preview, you could see it's going to include the background, but just keep in mind that will use up some more ink, of course.
Okay. So that's all the standard printing options. I'm going to show you some tricks that you can use to print in full scale, as well as customizing your view a little bit better. So to start, let's see what we could do to print this full scale. And if we were to select all of this, we could see the size of it by looking at the bottom here.
And right now it's about 61 by 70 inches. So you can see that's pretty large, but there may be sometimes you want to print a project full scale, maybe as a template or just to see if it's going to fit before you cut it. So to do that, what you can do is go to file, then come down to export and we're going to export it as a PDF document.
And in this case, I'm going to export all the vectors and on sheet one, and we don't need to export the job bounds. So with all that selected, I'm going to click export, and then we can give it a name. I'll just keep it as new and click save. Now if I were to open that file up, and this is in the Adobe PDF viewer.
I'm going to make this to one full page, and you can see the design has exported as a single page, but this page is really large right now. So you can either click print and scale it down by clicking fit, and that will fit it in a single sheet, which you could see will look much better than the options we were using to print it in Vectric.
So this will fill in the page much easier. But if you wanted to print it full scale, what you can do is click poster and make sure the scaling is set to 100%. And now that's going to print out multiple sheets to be able to put this together, as one big full scale image. And another thing you could do is you can click cut marks as well as labels.
And that will place marks and labels on all of these sheets. So it's a little bit easier to put them together and you can control the overlap of the sheets by this number right here. And then you can also specify portrait or landscape if you wanted to rotate the sheets. So as you can see, this design right here would print out in 90 pages.
Which actually it looks like a lot of these are wasted. So you may be able to do some editing to get that page count down quite a bit. But once you print this out, you can tape all the sheets together using the labels and cut marks, and then you'll have one big sheet of the full size image. So that's how you can print in full scale.
Now I'm going to show you one last trick inside of that trick. What you can do is scale down your job size to be exactly the size of your piece of paper. So if you're using standard letter size piece of paper, that would be eight and a half by 11. And then we're going to click OK. The thickness doesn't really matter in this case.
And then what I'm going to do is take the entire design and scale that down to fit inside of that new sheet. And then you can also move the parts around to be wherever you want them. And then as you see in this job right here is going to be exactly how it's going to look on your piece of paper. So if we orientate it just like that and then go to file and we're going to export it as a PDF again.
And we can use the same settings and click export. And then I'll just name this one number two and click save. And now I'll open that one up. And if we zoom out to see one full page, you could see it's going to be exactly how we orientated it in Vectric. And now when we click print, since we made it the size of the paper, It's going to look exactly how it looked in Vectric when we go to print it out.
Now just keep in mind, this will not be full scale, but it will look much better in a single sheet of paper. So those are several different tips for printing your projects. If you have any questions on those, just let me know. That's all for this video. Make sure you like and subscribe for more. And if you want to master your Vectric software, Make sure you check out my Vectric training classes linked right here, where we go much more in depth how to use the Vectric software step by step.
And included with my training courses is weekly Q&A calls where I can answer your questions one on one and get the support you need. And if you want to watch another great Vectric tip, check out this video posted right here.
