Creo 3 Printing Interface

[John.Pryal]

Hi all, i have been working with Creo 3, trying to get to grips with the changes. Like i have said in a previous post, its pretty much the same as Creo 2. Nearly all my mapkeys continue to work, except the ones i had for printing, there is a new printing interface, which meant having to re-record those, but something is different. In Creo 2 & earlier, i ran my mapkey (one click of the mouse), job done, i moved on to the next thing. In Creo 3, when i run my mapkey, it cannot complete the print operation without 2 additional clicks at the end. I have recorded & re-recorded these mapkeys, ensuring i record all selections including 'Close Print Preview' to completely exit the Print Preview tab, but the system will not record these last 2 selections. Its a pain in the backside. Is anyone else having problems with Print Preview?

Another thing, this is all new & maybe i am just not understanding the functionality, but the Orientation button (landscape & portrait) seems to work in reverse, i select landscape & i see the sheet (not my drawing) turn portrait & vice versa. Maybe its just me doing something wrong, any advice greatly appreciated.

John

[TomD.inPDX]

What is the mapkey sending the system when it is suppose to close the preview? Can you edit the mapkey in config.pro to force the window close?

Is there an auto-rotate option somewhere that confuses landscape? I've seen this in many operations including DXF previews.

I hope you are reporting these little frustrations. It would be nice if all this just works by the time I load Creo 3.0

[TomU]

Nothing is simple about printing. This has not changed with Creo. I'm still trying to completely wrap my head around some of this.

Think of orientation like a rotate command. Whatever the dimensions of your sheet, these are the "landscape" sizes. If you choose portrait orientation you are really saying, rotate this sheet by 90 degrees.

From the testing I've done, you NEVER want to choose portrait orientation. Instead use a custom sheet size with portrait dimensions, but leave the orientation landscape.

Random stuff from my testing:

• Creo always outputs landscape oriented postscript files, regardless of the selected orientation.
• The built in paper sizes are all landscape orientation. For portrait size sheets, change the paper size to variable, but leave the orientation still landscape.
• Pro/e outputs custom (non-standard) postscript page sizes.
• When the printer rotate is used (spin 0, spin 90), the coordinate system is rotated, and the origin is shifted, but the bounding box is not corrected and the page size is not changed. This means everything is oriented in portrait, but still on a landscape page Basically it's wacked.
• True Type Fonts are rotated based on their orientation to the landscape view of the sheet.
• Don't set the orientation to something other than landscape. All it fundamentally does is add a single rotate command to the post script output. Unfortunately this messes up the orientation of any true type fonts on the drawings.

One other thing. If there is no native text (TTF), the postscript interpreters (Adobe, GhostScript, etc.) don't know how to orient the page and therefore default to the page size - which is always landscape (for the built in paper size). This means even if the orientation is supposed to be portrait, conversion to PDF, etc. will be incorrectly oriented.

[TomD.inPDX]

I was working with the DXF output and had to keep switching from portrait to landscape. I had 7 files with a mix of portrait and landscape. It worked but not without glitches. When you change the height to more than the width, it automatically switched the orientation dialog to portrait. In some instances, it clipped the top and bottom of the page on the DXF output, but this was not persistent (not reportable). Eventually everything worked fine and -as expected-. This was using Save-As. Export functionality.

I did try printing something at 1:1 yesterday and it came out small. I made sure my printing from adobe was set to actual size but it wasn't when I printed it.

[John.Pryal]

Yep, i figured out the whole using custom paper sizes for portrait orientation a long time ago, that is basically what my mapkeys were doing. My real problem here is not being able to exit the 'Print Preview' tab. Antonius, you mentioned editing the mapkey in my config.pro, i dont suppose you know how i would do that?

Regards

John

[TomD.inPDX]

It is stored in your config.pro file. I don't know the command to cancel or close a window.

But you might get a hint if you create a similar case that does work in a different mapkey.

[John.Pryal]

Yes, i already looked at the config.pro, heres the weird thing, it ends by stating ClosePrintPreview, so it looks like the command is being recorded, but does not work, crazy!!

John

[TomU]

I just recorded a sample mapkey and it exits the print preview just fine.

mapkey pa @MAPKEY_NAMEPrint A;@MAPKEY_LABELPrint A;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Select `main_dlg_cur` `appl_casc`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Select `main_dlg_cur` `appl_menu.left_pane.prepare_casc`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Close `main_dlg_cur` `appl_casc`;~ Command `ProCmdModelPrint`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Command `ProCmdDwgPubPrint` ;~ Command `ProCmdDwgPubClosePreview`;

Typically you can remove "Select", "Open", and "Close" lines from the mapkeys.

mapkey pa @MAPKEY_NAMEPrint A;@MAPKEY_LABELPrint A;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Command `ProCmdModelPrint`;\

mapkey(continued) ~ Command `ProCmdDwgPubPrint` ;~ Command `ProCmdDwgPubClosePreview`;

[John.Pryal]

I tried re-recording my mapkey, even created a brand new one, & still i cannot get Creo to exit the Print Preview tab cleanly. Every time i run the mapkey, all it appears to do is remember the mouse clicks & keyboard input up to the point you actually click 'Print' & then 'Close Print Preview', it does not remember these last 2 mouse clicks. Here is the mapkey as it appears in my config.pro

John

[TomU]

I just manually retyped this entire picture and tried it. No issues. Print dialog pops up, choose okay, then the print preview automatically closes.

I wonder if there is something in your environment that is causing the issue. Maybe try doing a clean startup with no config options set and only this mapkey loaded.

[John.Pryal]

I just tried that, no difference. Running the mapkey will not close the 'Print Preview'. I am back working with Creo Elements 5 for the foreseeable future, so i will have to try figure this out later i guess.

Thanks for the help up until now.

John

[TomD.inPDX]

I wonder if the graphics driver software has some sort of window priority application running, John.

Tom, thanks for going through the confirmation that this "shoiuld" work.