Printing full design page Layout

Hello, I’m trying to print a model from Layout. The problem is that when I go to Print Preview it only shows a portion of what I’m trying to print. Even though, when I’m in Layout, I see the whole design on one page. It’s almost as if the print option “zooms” on my design and doesn’t allow me to “zoom out” to include my whole drawing to print.

Printing directly from LayOut will use the paper size available for your printer. If the Paper size you have selected for the LayOut project is larger than what your printer can handle, it’ll only print a part of it. Better option is to export the file as a PDF. Then you can adjust the scale of the file in Adobe Reader or Acrobat.

What size paper did you choose for your project?

I chose the Tabloid div4

And what size paper can your printer handle?

I’m using 9 1/2 x 11 standard paper.

I tried your suggestion of exporting to a PDF. This worked well. Thank you.

Would you suggest using a different paper size for future projects?

Do you mean 8-1/2 x 11?

Generally you should choose the paper size you’ll want to print to at the beginning of the project. I would still export a PDF and print that but if you plan to print on Letter-size paper, it would make sense to choose Letter size paper from the beginning. The aspect ratio of the different paper sizes is usually not the same so the layout might look strange if you start with a different paper size than you’ll actually print.

Yes, thank you.

You’re welcome.

FWIW, here is an example to show you what I mean about the aspect ratio of the paper. This is on Tabloid-sized paper. I’ve drawn a rectangle to the dimensions of a Latter sized sheet. You can see that the Tabloid sheet is a longer rectangle than the Letter sized sheet. If both rectangles had the same aspect ratio, that diagonal line would pass through the corner of the smaller rectangle, too.

If you think about reducing the Tabloid sized sheet to fit onto the Letter sized paper, you can see that content at the lower right corner of the page won’t be at the corner on the smaller paper.

Thank you Dave for taking the time to explain this. I now have a better understanding of how to handle this in the future.

For whatever it’s worth, I thought the tutorials for SketchUp were fantastic. Easy to follow and understand. The tutorials for Layout were a C-. Part of the problem is I’m using Windows and the tutorial was on a Mac. There were several times where there wasn’t a “one for one” translation form Mac to PC, unless I just didn’t understand. The person doing the instruction moved very fast and didn’t at all acknowledge that the Windows function might be different.

Thank you,

John S. Downs | Account Manager
M. Holland | 400 Skokie Blvd, Suite 600, Northbrook, IL 60062, USA
C 972 658-3900

Happy to help.

I noticed that about the LayOut tutorials, too.

By the way, you should edit your previous post to remove the signature stuff.