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Printing???

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Eric

Printing???

I freely admit to being a complete librecad (and CAD in general) noob, so I am probably doing something utterly stupid and should be flogged, but...

I am using librecad to lay out a floorplan for home re-modeling. The way I have done this to draw (essentially) two paths, one representing the interior surface of the walls and one representing the exterior surface of the walls (so that the space between the two paths is the wall itself). I realize (or perhaps assume) that, as the paths have no real attributes natively, I need to assign attributes (like line-width and style and such) to each of the paths before it is "real" in the drawing.

The problem I am having is that, no matter what I do (as far as I have been able to figure out) about assigning attributes, the design I am working on remains stubbornly non-printable (i.e. if I send it to the printer I get a blank sheet of paper out of it and if I try to generate a PDF from it, I get a blank PDF file).

I am really wondering what I might be doing wrong. I love librecad for this job because it permits me to be very precise in constructing the drawing, but, eventually, I will have to print out my work and give it to someone.

Any ideas???

Eric

R. van Twisk

Re: Printing???

Administrator

Eric,

it could be a bug that LirbeCAD isn't printing, However I also noticed a 'maybe' but

when leaving all drawing to black/white.

Try to set a layer color in the layer dialog, make it blue for example, and see if it can print that.

If this is so, then I have a good idea where the bug is.

Thanks for reporting.

Ries

On Jul 2, 2011, at 4:13 PM, Eric [via LibreCAD] wrote:

I freely admit to being a complete librecad (and CAD in general) noob, so I am probably doing something utterly stupid and should be flogged, but...

I am using librecad to lay out a floorplan for home re-modeling. The way I have done this to draw (essentially) two paths, one representing the interior surface of the walls and one representing the exterior surface of the walls (so that the space between the two paths is the wall itself). I realize (or perhaps assume) that, as the paths have no real attributes natively, I need to assign attributes (like line-width and style and such) to each of the paths before it is "real" in the drawing.

The problem I am having is that, no matter what I do (as far as I have been able to figure out) about assigning attributes, the design I am working on remains stubbornly non-printable (i.e. if I send it to the printer I get a blank sheet of paper out of it and if I try to generate a PDF from it, I get a blank PDF file).

I am really wondering what I might be doing wrong. I love librecad for this job because it permits me to be very precise in constructing the drawing, but, eventually, I will have to print out my work and give it to someone.

Any ideas???

Eric

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Eric

Re: Printing???

Ries,

Thanks for the quick response. I tried setting all of the layers blue (I have several layers with things like furniture and kitchen counters and such, drawn more or less as I described the basic floor plan) as you suggested. I also made sure that every layer had a dimension > 0.00 (0.05 mm is what I chose). I still get blank sheets and all-white PDF files.

A little more information:

I am running LibreCAD under Linux, Ubuntu 11.04.
The version I am running is (from the about window) Version:

1.0.0beta5
SVN Revision:
Date: Jan 9 2011
(c) 2010 by R. van Twiskis as follows:

If it would help you figure this out, I would be willing to send you the drawing (as long as you promise not to critique it :)).

Eric

Eric

Re: Printing???

In reply to this post by Eric

Ries,

Hang on. I just went to try installing on a Windows machine and I realized I have an old version. That had not occurred to me because I figured I was doing something pretty basic wrong (but not as basic as running an old beta version, apparently). Let me try upgrading before I ask you to look any further. I will post back with the results.

Eric

R. van Twisk

Re: Printing???

Administrator

In reply to this post by Eric

Eric,

there is already a new version of LibreCAD available in the ppa.

Can you try to upgrade?

Ries

On Jul 2, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Eric [via LibreCAD] wrote:

Ries,

Thanks for the quick response. I tried setting all of the layers blue (I have several layers with things like furniture and kitchen counters and such, drawn more or less as I described the basic floor plan) as you suggested. I also made sure that every layer had a dimension > 0.00 (0.05 mm is what I chose). I still get blank sheets and all-white PDF files.

A little more information:

I am running LibreCAD under Linux, Ubuntu 11.04.
The version I am running is (from the about window) Version:

1.0.0beta5
SVN Revision:
Date: Jan 9 2011
(c) 2010 by R. van Twiskis as follows:

If it would help you figure this out, I would be willing to send you the drawing (as long as you promise not to critique it :)).

Eric

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Eric

Re: Printing???

I updated to (from dpkg-query):

librecad-1.0.0~rc1+yeslib201107010652-0ubuntu0~daily3~natty1
librecad-data-1.0.0~rc1+yeslib201107010652-0ubuntu0

And I am seeing the same thing. I am going to bring my drawing over to the windows side and see if it works differently there...

Eric

R. van Twisk

Re: Printing???

Administrator

Eric,

thanks for testing this.

On my mac I tested printing (to PDF) and that worked just fine.

There seems to be issues with paper size selection, but that might not

be LibreCAD's fault.

Ries

On Jul 2, 2011, at 5:41 PM, Eric [via LibreCAD] wrote:

I updated to (from dpkg-query):

librecad-1.0.0~rc1+yeslib201107010652-0ubuntu0~daily3~natty1
librecad-data-1.0.0~rc1+yeslib201107010652-0ubuntu0

And I am seeing the same thing. I am going to bring my drawing over to the windows side and see if it works differently there...

Eric

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Eric

Re: Printing???

Ries,

Okay, I have tried windows and Linux with the same result.

So, let me describe what I did on Windows because I wound up making a new file to do it.

I started up librecad (RC1 off of the download section of your page as of this afternoon). I set up the background color (application preferences) to #ffffff.

I then went into the "Line Drawing" menu and drew a three-segment line in a triangle shape. This was all on layer 0.

Then I tried printing that to see what would happen. I got a blank sheet. Then I tried changing the layer to "Blue" with "0.005 mm" dimension and "Continuous". This also produced a blank sheet when printed.

When I got back to Linux I tried the same thing from scratch and got the same result.

So I am getting consistent behavior on Linux and Windows.

Is there some step I am missing in this that I should know about to make the drawing printable?

Eric

Eric

Re: Printing???

I have found a clue. I just tried a print-preview and the drawing is vastly larger than the page that gets put up in the preview. I zoom out of the preview and, when the white rectangle that represents the page is about a centimeter high the drawing fills the space in the preview window. The page part of the preview is in the middle of empty space, which is probably why it is blank :).

Is there something I need to do to put the drawing onto the page?

Eric

R. van Twisk

Re: Printing???

Administrator

Eric,

i am glad you cracked that one!

when you are in print preview you can setup the scale

and move the paper 'under' the drawing for positioning.

Ries

On Jul 2, 2011, at 6:37 PM, Eric [via LibreCAD] wrote:

I have found a clue. I just tried a print-preview and the drawing is vastly larger than the page that gets put up in the preview. I zoom out of the preview and, when the white rectangle that represents the page is about a centimeter high the drawing fills the space in the preview window. The page part of the preview is in the middle of empty space, which is probably why it is blank :).

Is there something I need to do to put the drawing onto the page?

Eric

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Eric

Re: Printing???

Ries,

That got everything to fit on the page, but I am still getting a strange result. The print-preview looks perfect but when I print it I get a kind of vague approximation with some of the lines in place and some not. There are also some lines I don't have in the drawing.

I tried a much simpler drawing with two four sided boxes drawn with line segments and closed at the endpoints where one of the boxes was completely enclosed within the other to see what would happen. What I got in the PDF was the outer box and three sides of the inner box with the two vertical inner sides touching the bottom line of the outer box. It should have looked sort of like:

+-------------------------------------+
| |
| +------------------------------+ |
| | | |
| +------------------------------+ |
| |
+------------------------------------+

But it is more like:

+------------------------------------+
| |
| +------------------------------+ |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
+-+------------------------------+--+

If these pictures work out decently in the forum.

Eric

R. van Twisk

Re: Printing???

Administrator

Eric,

I found a bug in LibreCAD how the QPrinter was setup and printing should be improved now, not perfect still but I do want to solve this so that we can have nice looking prints from LibreCAD.

If you can please try master...

Ries

Pierre de Québec

Re: Printing???

Hi,

I confirm I have the same problem. Each print command, a blank page is printed. I do not have this problem with other applications.

I use LibreCAD on Kubuntu

Thank.

Pierre

dxli

Re: Printing???

I just tested with the newest development version(you may install development from ubuntu PPA: http://librecad.org/cms/home/installation/linux.html ), works for me.

1. draw something
2. File->Print Preview
3. Fit to page
4. Print, Print to file(PDF, or PostScript)

The pdf/ps file contains the drawing

Please also test with the newly released 1.0.0_rc4 version

Pierre de Québec

Re: Printing???

Hi dxli,

Yes, it works. But only with a new drawing. This does not work with my existing drawing. It's as if the DXF file was corrupt. I tried to correct the situation by deleting one by one the layers and by printing every time. But this does not change. Still a blank page.

By the way, I installed version 1.0.0rc4.

Thank.

Pierre

dxli

Re: Printing???

Hello Pierre,

I feel it's a corrupted file.

Please make a testcase dxf file and file a bug at our bug tracker at sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=browse&group_id=342582&atid=1433844

I will investigate.

Thanks,

Dongxu Li

Pierre de Québec wrote

Hi dxli,

Yes, it works. But only with a new drawing. This does not work with my existing drawing. It's as if the DXF file was corrupt. I tried to correct the situation by deleting one by one the layers and by printing every time. But this does not change. Still a blank page.

By the way, I installed version 1.0.0rc4.

Thank.

Pierre

lamprakis

Re: Printing???

Hi,

I get a white page when I print to an A4 size pdf page regardless if the draw fits the page.

For the same draw, printing to an Letter size pdf page produces correct output.

is this a bug? I am using ver 2.0.0alpha4