Hi Michael,

The PDF output from MOI are A1, one thing which could be good is when drawing parts and doing paper 1to1 prints to check a redraw over part, is the ability to move the page tile around to get the full print out on say A4 which is common you can do multiple prints to stick together as an quick a cheap proof method.

This sort of output is possible in RHINO but the ability to do this MOI would be another arrow in MOIs toolset.

Hi Alex, if you turn off the "Center on page" option, does that do what you need?

With that option off, it should generate a page with the 0,0,0 origin point in MoI corresponding to the bottom-left corner of the page. You should be able to draw in a rectangle of your page width and height with its corner at the 0,0,0 origin point to give you a preview of what is going to be on the page, then move your objects (while keeping the page rectangle in place) after each export to expose different areas to the visible page rectangle.

The "Center on page" option is here:


- Michael

Michael,

I think Alex raised a good point. I had the same issue in the past when I was building a prototype.

At that time, I had to print 1:1 scale pieces so that I can glue the printed silhouette to a plywood board and then cut everything with a jigsaw. I only had a small A4 printer and the pieces where around a metre, so I had to print the pieces in sections and then stick the A4s together. I remember I struggled a little bit to find a solution as MOI only let you print from centre or 0,0,0. The latter option is ok if you have only one piece that you can move around in the model space, however, I had over 20 pieces. So, in the end, I found the best way was to keep the option "center on page" and use a custom page size, like a very long A4. After that, I could open the PDF file in acrobat and in the "page to print" options select "current view", and print the parts by moving the page, right-left. Alternatively, if you have AutoCAD you can export as dxf and plot from there which is so much easier.

Not sure how this can be sorted out in MOI. Perhaps being able to set a custom origin like 200,40,0 could be a solution? Also having a direct print command, without the need to export as pdf first, could help.

Salvatore

Hi Salvatore,

re:
> The latter option is ok if you have only one piece that you can move around in the model
> space, however, I had over 20 pieces.

Ok, but I don't understand why moving 20 pieces is a problem. If you select the 20 pieces you can move them all together.


re:
> Not sure how this can be sorted out in MOI. Perhaps being able to set a custom origin
> like 200,40,0 could be a solution?

I could set it up so that if you set a construction plane (View > CPlane) that it would use the construction plane's origin as the page origin instead of only using the world 0,0,0 origin point.

- Michael

I would add an option to extend grid in case imported/created model/drawing is bigger than current grid.

Hi Alex & Salvatore, probably the simplest way to print across multiple pages to stitch together is to make a custom size large page that can hold everything for the export out of MoI and then when you print the PDF file in Adobe Reader there is an option in there to generate print-page sized tiles:
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-posters-banners-acrobat-reader.html

On my version of Adobe Reader here it's the "Poster" button that will set this up:


- Michael

Thanks again Michael - a wealth of knowledge that is a good solution have used acrobat for years and never used the poster feature sometimes things become so common and set in a workflow you dont look into the next feature.
Here is part out to PDF at scale 1;1 on a custom page setup.

Thanks Again MOIs PDFs are so clean and such a good tool for client presentations.

You're welcome Alex, I'm glad that solution will work for you!

- Michael

Hi,

Sorry I haven't replied sooner. Thanks for the suggestions.

The poster option in Acrobat is not suitable for the "print+glue+cut" approach, because it's too precise. I need to have 10-15mm minimum of overlap in each sheet and the possibility to add a border, so that I can precisely overlap the sheets when stick them together.

In autocad I used to draw a series of overlapping rectangles corresponding to the paper size and then set print origin to the bottom left of each sheet, Here is a quick example



If you have many pieces and you set all of them within the same kind of grid you can get all the PDF you need quite easily, without moving nothing.

I know I could move all the pieces together, but I just don't like to move parts around just to export a PDF, unless I have few of them.

I also notice while I was preparing this quick example that if I select a Point and click on Details it doesn't show nothing in the object properties, it would useful to actually show the x,y,z position.

Thanks.
Salvatore

Hi Salvatore,

re:
> The poster option in Acrobat is not suitable for the "print+glue+cut" approach, because it's
> too precise. I need to have 10-15mm minimum of overlap in each sheet and the possibility
> to add a border, so that I can precisely overlap the sheets when stick them together.

There is an overlap option in it which sounds like what you are describing:
https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/print-posters-banners-acrobat-reader.html


> I know I could move all the pieces together, but I just don't like to move parts around
> just to export a PDF, unless I have few of them.

I could cook up a plugin for you that would let you pick some points and then handle the moving for you and generate one PDF file for each page origin point that you picked, would that be helpful?


> I also notice while I was preparing this quick example that if I select a Point and click on Details
> it doesn't show nothing in the object properties, it would useful to actually show the x,y,z position.

I've been meaning to do that, the part that is a little tricky is I want it to work for both showing and also setting the point as well.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

I didn't know about the overlap option in acrobat, that's perfect!

About the plugin, I am not sure I understand how it works but if you are going to do I will be happy to test it.

> I've been meaning to do that, the part that is a little tricky is I want it to work for both showing and also setting the point as well.

That would open a lot of new possibilities for designing, I definitely endorse this! However even just knowing the location in the model and being able to copy the text would be beneficial.

Salvatore

I've just returned to MoI, but a few wishes I could think of for MOi V5 would be:

1: More fail-safe fillets and blends.

2: FFD / Lattice deformations.

3: A mode to view objects with true transparency, so you can work on an element while seeing other objects half transparent.

Hi Salvatore,

re:
> I didn't know about the overlap option in acrobat, that's perfect!
>
> About the plugin, I am not sure I understand how it works but if you are
> going to do I will be happy to test it.

If the overlap option in Acrobat Reader does what you need then that should be the easiest way and a plug-in to export multiple PDFs wouldn't be needed.

- Michael

I use a program by Matthias Wandel called BigPrint.

https://woodgears.ca/bigprint/

I use it to make patterns for my woodworking projects from graphics. A project is imported into BigPrint as a graphic for the print layout. From there, it can be resized and printed out to a printer with over laps. The pages are aligned and overlapped then taped together to make a large pattern.

Hi Michael,

re:
> If the overlap option in Acrobat Reader does what you need then that should be the easiest way and a plug-in to export multiple PDFs wouldn't be needed.

I made a couple of tests, overlapping from Acrobat is good enough so I prefer not to waste your precious time with a plug-in,

However, to make the process more paper efficient it would be good when exporting a selection to PDF, to have an option that automatically push the selections to the bottom left corner of the page, like some sort of local origin. Can this be implemented somehow?

Thanks.
Salvatore

Hi Salvatore,

re:
> However, to make the process more paper efficient it would be good when
> exporting a selection to PDF, to have an option that automatically push the
> selections to the bottom left corner of the page, like some sort of local origin.
> Can this be implemented somehow?

There is an option currently to center the output on the page. I don't understand why placing them in the bottom left corner of the page instead of centering would be more paper efficient, can you describe that a little more?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Well, I was thinking, if I have 30 pieces that are all 200-250mm high and vary slightly in length, from let's say 500mm to 800mm. I can select each of them, set a custom paper like 297x 810 and be sure they will all fit in that kind of sheet. If I centre the output, it will be ok for the height since there is no so much difference but I would prefer to see the output pushed to the left so that I can avoid printing the part left white... So actually in that example the best would be more centre-left rather than bottom-left... Does it makes sense to you?

Salvatore

Hi Salvatore,

re:
> So actually in that example the best would be more centre-left rather than
> bottom-left... Does it makes sense to you?

For that case I would recommend turning off "Center on page", that will make MoI use 0,0,0 as the page origin and you can move your objects to position them where you want to control where they will be printed at.

You can draw a rectangle starting at 0,0 and with your page width and height if you want a visual guide to see what area in model space is going to map to the output page.

- Michael

Hi All,
I would definitely welcome feature that would allow me to see cut object.

Meaning If I have a object, I would insert a plane and would be able to view from that plane so I know what is inside and how it looks if I cut along that plane.

Now I have to hide faces to get something similar.

This is very useful for multiple objects that have to fit together.

Illustration on picture.

Thanks a lot.
Juraj

Hello Michael,

I know that it's been discussed, well, so...
Just wondering, might a file system preview (thumbnail) be plausible for V5?

Big fan; Love your work,
MindSet