I am tired of taping together pieces of paper for by templates and profiles so I am trying to upload to staples. When I check the attachment that I upload as a PDF file it comes out as the board info page. I am afraid that when I show up at staples I am going to have a giant poster of my outline and profile, but the sizing will not be correct. I checked the old posts, but I am still confused.
There’s a thread on printing templates from aps3000/ aku someplace… but to get a properly sized PDF file (on a Mac)
-deselect all printers
-make a custom paper size bigger than your board, say 84"l x 24"w
-go to print outline, select the custom page size, and save as a pdf file
The staples near me won’t do big cheap prints, but Kinkos will do them for 75cents per sq. ft. Reprographics places are cheaper.
Thanks, but I am on a PC and that is not working for me. I have to choose one of my listed printers, deselecting is not an option.
I gave up on Kinko’s. Each time I would go there it was a disaster. It usually took about 6 attempts for them to actually print it out correctly. Of course after a short argument about how yes they do print out this large because I’ve been here 5 times before doing this. Then giving them a short Illustrator lesson after they tell me I don’t know what I’m doing then after that that telling them I’ve worked in Illustrator everyday for the past 7 years. ha.
Bring a tape measure! Cause they are going screw up.
Ultimately it’s faster to cut out and tape together off you own printer. And you can make sure that it is the actual size.
Man I really can’t stand Kinko’s.
Just did this for my last board. From AKU to printing at Staples (on a PC). First download the trial version of Adobe Illustrator, or your lucky and already have it. Then you basically open up the PDF that comes out when you tell AKU to give you a PDF (the board info page, with the outline, and a bunch of other stuff). Then in Illustrator you can delete everything you dont need, and size up your outline to whatever size it should be. Then take this PDF to staples. It cost about $5.
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Then in Illustrator you can delete everything you dont need, and size up your outline to whatever size it should be. Then take this PDF to staples. It cost about $5.
Do you mind a step by step for the clueless like me?
Which tool/Do you use a tool to select only the board half
Then how do you delete everything else
Then how do you you ‘size up’ the outline to the desired actual print size
OK, I don’t have Illustrator in front of me, but I’ll take a stab at remembering how it went… Once you have the pdf opened in Illustrator, you are going to want to be using the tool which is a just the regular old solid black cursor. Click on something in the pdf (doesn’t really matter what). If it selects everything, you need to ungroup the objects in the pdf. First right click on any object, and then click “Release Clipping Mask”. Left click something again. Then right click an object again and click “ungroup”. Then you should be able to select individual objects and just hit delete on the keyboard. Or you can use that same tool and draw a selection box around a bunch of stuff and hit delete. When you have just your board (or half your board) left, you have to resize it. First, get your whole board as one piece by drawing a selection box around the whole thing, then right clicking it and hitting “group”. Then on my version of Adobe there is a bar that comes up when the gorup is selected which has size bar up on the top. Just type in your length in the right box. If your board is a 5’10", like mine was, I would type it as “70 in”. Then you just change your page setup to have a bigger paper, so that the thing fits. If that doesn’t make any sense let me know and I’ll check it out again when I have it in front of me.
Thanks, I think my son has the new version of illustrator, I will check. I will also check to see if it is a free download so I can put it on to my laptop.
Download PrimoPDF, it’s free. It will allow you to “print” to PDF, and you can change paper sizes as suggested above.
Illustrator is $200-500 depending on the version after the 30 day trial. I think I will go with the PrimoPDF and see how that works. If it doesn’t its back to print and tape, which is starting to look better all the time.
an easy way to deal with the multiple sheet print outs is to just use some 3m adhesive spray and tack down each piece on your template material, so much easier than dealing with tape. Also, when your cutting out, the paper wont move on you.
It’s fool proof.
makes using multiple sheets a non-issue IMO
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an easy way to deal with the multiple sheet print outs is to just use some 3m adhesive spray and tack down each piece on your template material, so much easier than dealing with tape. Also, when your cutting out, the paper wont move on you.
Yep, that’s the best way for putting it on masonite. It is great with full run plots of templates as well. I used to cut out my outline then trace it or spray paint it so it left a silhouette of the template on the masonite. Much easier to stick it down with the 3M and cut it out.
I am assuming that a band saw will cut right through the paper. Anyone try it with a hand held jig saw?
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I am assuming that a band saw will cut right through the paper. Anyone try it with a hand held jig saw?
It’s only paper! Hand saw, band saw, jig saw, anything will work. My favorite on masonite is a fine tooth pull saw. Just make sure the paper is down good before you start cutting.
im having some trouble printing out my “outline” on aku shaper. When I print it out only hlaf the board comes out and there is no way telling which piece of paper goes where. Im eventually going to print it out on a huge piece of paper at a store but just want to see what it will look like. Help?
I can answer that one. It should print out in order. Either nose to tail or tail to nose, I can not remember which. When you print the outline you only get half, at least when you are printing on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.
Here’s a tip, If you use your print them on your home printer try using grid paper it will help line up the sheets as you glue them down.
One step better would be to include a uniform grid in the original file to use to align the sheets. Printing on grid paper will only get you to the alignment that matches the ability of the printer to align to the paper. it would be best to have the grid rotated 45 degrees so that none of the grid lines are parallel to the pages printed. This might be straight forward to implement in APS3000. It isn’t open source code is it??
I just finished a decade designing printers and printheads and can tell you that many printers do a terrible job of aligning images to the page. If the image is off by a couple mm in X and Y and skewed/rotated to boot the grid paper won’t help.
Hi,
You’re absolutely right, the printers do a poor job of aligning the print on the paper. This is pretty clear if you start checking. You may even get different size between the left edge and right edge of the paper. Thus adding a grid to the printing was one of the first things I did in BoardCAD. But you should even measure the grid to make sure the print is correct.
One other thing, if you’re sick and tired of taping the paper together from small sheet try using spray glue directly on the template material and stick the sheets right on the template. Works like a charm.
regards,
Håvard
so my template is finshed and I want to send it to staples/office depot. Is there any option to just send the outline instead of the board info page, with outline and slices?