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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Mike Walsh wrote:
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Things seem fine through page 14, and then they go away. One of two things
come to mind. Either it is an LPub bug, or, possibly the page number is
hiding *under* the PLI? Id make sure that the PLI is placed relative to
the page number.
You can always send me your MPD (which will be held in the strictest of
confidence), and I can look at it.
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Ive moved the PLI around thinking it was underneath it but it didnt seem to
make a difference. I will send you the MPD file so you can take a look at
it.
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I found a bug in LPub.
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- The other issue I am dealing with is scaling - my Airport Shuttle is long - about 200 studs when it is all put together. This makes it hard to fit on a page. When I scale the final assembly all of the other step images scale too. I cant seem to scale the image for just one step. Any ideas?
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Go to the final page, put your cursor on the assembly step and right click.
You should be able to set the model scale just for that step.
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I tried it but even though I told it to apply to only this step, the scale
was applied to the entire set of instructions. I will try it again and see
if I can get it to work.
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Yes, your highest level model is interesting because the entire model is
expressed as steps in submodels, so when it placed the model scale meta, it did
it at the top of the step (which is before all the add lines of the submodels).
I moved the meta manually to after all the submodels, and it worked. Sorry you
have to do that manually, it is hard to figure out a usage model for placing
meta commands that fits *all* possible cases.
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Any other suggestions are welcome.
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Given that your overall model is more wide than tall, had you considered
using a more landscape set of page dimensions? Go to page configuration and
swap the numbers in page dimensions to get landscape.
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I tried both landscape and portrait orientations and settled on portrait as
it seemed to fit the majority of the pages better.
Enhancement request: Allow per page size overrides! ;-)
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Egads.... makes my brain hurt with regards to printing.
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Did you know that you can resize PLIs by dragging the mouse? It would seem
you might be able to merge page 11 and 12 if you shorten the PLI in step
7....
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I didnt know that - I will give that a shot. I have a couple places where I
ended up with only one step on a page when it would make the instructions
flow better if there were two.
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Using placement features new to LPub 4 (placing callouts relative to step
group), I was able to eliminate about 1/3 of your pages.
Also, LPub 4 tries to size the PLIs in step groups based on the size of the
assembly step automatically if you do not have metas that specify PLI
constraints. I removed a bunch of your PLI constraints (using the edit window),
and this helped things pack more densely.
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Last question - is there a way to generate a complete BOM image for all of
the parts needed to build the model and add a BOM page at the end?
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Add a trailing cover page, then you should be able to use the Insert BOM
menu.
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Ok - got that working, thanks. The Insert BOM menu was greyed out until I
added the back cover page, just adding a page wasnt sufficient.
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Hmmm.... I will dig into this. BOM should not be limited to back cover page
(i.e. it should be placable on front cover page). It is not placable on pages
with steps.
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Thanks for the nice comments about LPub on your web page. Did you know that
you can create a cover page and insert a picture into the cover page? You
should not *have* to use Acrobat for that.
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I tried to create a cover page and insert an image but it was offset from the
top and left edges. My cover image is exactly 11x8.5, the same as my page
size and when I inserted the picture, it didnt fit correctly. Even
scaling the picture down so it was smaller than the page didnt fix the
problem, I still ended up with extra white space on the top and left and the
picture not centered on the page. I solved it by saving my cover image as a
PDF in Photoshop and then replacing the page in Acrobat. I think it makes
the final file size larger than it should be though.
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The problem here is that the PDF library limits things to specific page sizes,
*and* those page sizes are in centimeters, not inches. When you specify a size
LPub finds the closest page size from this list
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.5/qprinter.html#PaperSize-enum
that wholly encloses the page size you specified.
8.5x11 is a little smaller than its metric counterpart.
Someday Ill figure out one of two things: how to do custom page sizes, or
create a drop down list of only the sizes you can use.
Kevin
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
... snipped ...
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Using placement features new to LPub 4 (placing callouts relative to step
group), I was able to eliminate about 1/3 of your pages.
Also, LPub 4 tries to size the PLIs in step groups based on the size of the
assembly step automatically if you do not have metas that specify PLI
constraints. I removed a bunch of your PLI constraints (using the edit
window), and this helped things pack more densely.
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Another thing that LPub 4 does is automatically center step groups and assembly
steps in the center of the page. If there is a single step and with callout(s)
on the page, then LPub calculates the enclosing box of the assembly and
callout(s) and centers it in the center of the page. It does the same thing for
a page with a step group with callouts placed relative to the step group.
This way, the instructions tend to be automatically centered.
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Hmmm.... I will dig into this. BOM should not be limited to back cover page
(i.e. it should be placable on front cover page). It is not placable on
pages with steps.
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LPub will let you Add Bill of Materials on front or back cover pages, but not
on pages with steps.
Kevin
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In lugnet.cad, Kevin L. Clague wrote:
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The problem here is that the PDF library limits things to specific page
sizes, *and* those page sizes are in centimeters, not inches. When you
specify a size LPub finds the closest page size from this list
http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.5/qprinter.html#PaperSize-enum
that wholly encloses the page size you specified.
8.5x11 is a little smaller than its metric counterpart.
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Its true that 8.5x11 (US letter size) is not the same size as metric A4, but
the above page includes an entry for QPrinter::Letter, which is exactly
8.5x11, so unless thats not supported by LPub, I dont think thats the
problem. Remember, one inch is exactly 25.4 mm, so 8.5 inches is exactly 215.9
mm. So the fact that Qt internally use metric units shouldnt hurt anything, as
long as those metric units can at least resolve one tenth of a millimeter.
--Travis
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