Altium prints garbage - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Plecto
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2017, 07:38:44 am
content: Hi. If I try to print a circuit board with altium I get this:Printing schematics works fine and I haven't had any problems printing from any other program. What is the reason for this?

author: M4trix
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2017, 08:16:41 am
content: Looks like Altium has a good sense for art and abstract painting !Did you try to export the pcb files in PDF ?

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2017, 09:47:43 am
content: Altium has very bad printing interface. I had the software crashing because I dared to click the print preview button, and my printer current printer wasnt a standard printer but a laber printer. It defaulted to that, and then crashed. Nice.Anyways, check the print preview button. Right click, and go to "configuration". That is the first step, and restarting the software, closing all the other open project, freeing up memory. It shouldnt be this way, but it is.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2017, 11:54:56 am
content: Quote from: NANDBlog on July 25, 2017, 09:47:43 amI've had the opposite problem, where printing a schematic from Altium crashes the printer! In fairness to Altium, HP bears some blame for that one, but printing the same schematic to PDF and then printing the PDF works just fine.Generally I just print everything from Altium to PDF, mostly via OutJobs, and that usually works fine and gives a bit better control.

author: Plecto
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2017, 02:17:07 pm
content: Outputting to PDF works, but how do I scale it so that the board has the correct size?

author: M4trix
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 25, 2017, 03:51:44 pm
content: Go to --> File --> Page Setup. You can do the fine adjustments there.

author: Plecto
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2017, 03:29:30 pm
content: That didn't seem to work. Even though the scale was set to 1.00 the PDF was still big enough to need two A4 pages to print. The PCB is only 10x6cm :\

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2017, 03:48:08 pm
content: I've had Altium printing problems after IT department did (OS) Windows 7 update.Fix was to uninstall and reinstall the printer in Windows.

author: M4trix
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2017, 07:02:37 pm
content: Quote from: Plecto on July 26, 2017, 03:29:30 pmHm... what about the Adobe printer settings ?@floobydust,that's why I never print directly from Altium Designer.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 26, 2017, 07:32:39 pm
content: I've seen OP's thing once before, I hardly remember but the PCB origin/size/units were not set properly and that error carried over to the print job. Maybe I resized the damn room.I wonder if it looks OK in the Gerber viewer.I love printing directly from Altium designer. That way I get to take a long walk over the colour laser-printer in the next building and find... it's monochrome, a page is missing, big fat border appeared, did not rotate to landscape, wrong paper size, damn yellow ERC markers are everywhere, etc. etc.It's the only way to get exercise

author: Plecto
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2017, 05:57:31 am
content: Adobe Reader settings was set to letter as paper size, but not much changed by changing it to A4. I just exported gerber files and sent them to a board house. They seemed fine even though I was a bit worried that the board house interpreted my board to be a little bit smaller than it actually is, but they did mention that their measurements can be thrown off by various things. I'll make a new board with only one component and see how that works

author: plazma
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2017, 06:18:39 am
content: Quote from: Plecto on July 25, 2017, 07:38:44 amFrame it and put it on the wall

author: Pack34
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 27, 2017, 05:29:42 pm
content: Any luck exporting that as a PDF? I half-heartedly want to hang that in my office at home.

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2017, 01:15:34 am
content: Try printing through draftsman pdf exports if you have altium 17