Adding a Layout Panel to deal with multiple layouts is excellent, but the next step missing is to control the output of those layouts. As far as I know, there is no way to batch print multiple layouts in Rhino. Printing all layouts one by one with every revision becomes a bottleneck in the workflow, especially on larger projects.
A useful precedent is the Print Organizer function in Bentley’s Microstation. You can load multiple layouts from multiple files and centrally set up things like paper size, scale, etc.
Imagine you are preparing a drawing set for house construction. You might have plans drawn in one file, sections in another, details in the third one. Each of these files would have multiple layouts inside (ground floor, first floor, window details, door details, etc.). With print organizer, you could load all the layouts in these three files and batch print them. If a revision is needed, you make the changes in the files, reopen the same print organizer list and press print to have a new set of drawings printed.
Maybe your client needs only the plans and sections, but no details. You could create a separate print organizer list for that purpose and quickly print out the most recent design whenever the client asks for it.
In Bentley’s Microstation, the Print Organizer is an embedded function in the software. But it saves the lists externally in .pset files. BIM software packages usually keep these lists inside the files they were created in.
I believe this Rhino-specific Print Setup is limited to Windows. In Mac, _Print command opens a default system print menu that is lacking production-specific print parameters, such as the dash and comma operators highlighted in your image. Also, you can only select one page size for the whole batch print. This means that if you have layouts in different formats (e.g. one in A1, another in A4, etc.) they will all be printed in one size (e.g. all in A1). That might be the case in Windows as well, not sure.
printing layouts to PDF’s is sooooooo slow inside Rhino, we need a batch publisher which will print individual layouts and keep the layout name as the file name after exporting, c’mon we need this sooo badly
It would be fantastic if the new Layouts Tab could be tweaked with the requested capability, as it seems like a lot of the interface improvements are already implemented there.
The way I would see this working is that settings could be tweaked from the Layouts Tab, and then when the user hits a button, this information is prefilled into the standard Rhino print dialog and the print job could be automatically started. That way you keep changes to a minimum and keep the best of both worlds.
Printing PDF’s to one sheet per file has been long requested. I think it would work great as a checkbox in the current Print dialog.
Individual page printing is a must as all document control systems depend on having a PDF file per sheet.
Another feature would be sets that you can set up with different layouts. I.e., you can define one set to have drawings for the client and another set with the same drawings as well as others for issue to the design team. See an example from ArchiCAD:
This makes it easy to organise the publishing of your information as you don’t have to keep remembering what drawings have to be issued for what purpose.
