Printed Output

Now reading version 17.1. For the latest, read: Printed Output for version 20.2

Even though we all like the idea of a paperless office, sometimes you need to output your design onto a piece of paper. Altium Designer has a number of different editors, such as the schematic editor, PCB editor, text editor, and so on, and each can send output to a printer. For certain editors, such as the PCB editor, you also want to be able to generate different configurations of printed output, such as an assembly print, or a drill drawing.

So what happens when you select File » Print, exactly what output will you get in each editor?

Default Prints

Altium Designer manages the large range of possible printed outputs across the different editors using a feature called Default Prints. Default Prints define the printer settings you want used whenever you select File » Print, regardless of which editor you are using in Altium Designer.

The Default Prints are accessed and configured by selecting File » Default Prints from the menus. Because the default print settings are stored within the project, the Options for Project dialog launches after running the command.

Select which Output is the Default Print

The Default Prints tab of the Options for Project dialog lists all of the possible printed output types that can be generated from Altium Designer. Next to each output type is the editor that generates that output, such as PCB, Schematic, and so on.

Each output also includes a Default Print checkbox. For each editor you can enable one Default Print checkbox, indicating that when you select File » Print you want this output to be the one that is sent to the printer.

Configure the Print

For each output you can also Configure the output (what data that is sent to the printer). The dialog that opens to help manage these options varies depending on which Output is selected when the Configure button is clicked.

Likewise, clicking the Page Setup option opens the respective print properties dialog for the selected output. Use the properties dialog to set paper-specific settings, such as orientation, scaling, color, and so on. These settings are also saved in the current project file.

 

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Note

The features available depend on your Altium product access level. Compare features included in the various levels of Altium Designer Software Subscription and functionality delivered through applications provided by the Altium 365 platform.

If you don’t see a discussed feature in your software, contact Altium Sales to find out more.

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