I have a rather complex file with many layouts, most of them with details in Technical Display Mode on them. I don’t always want to print all the layouts to PDF, I rather have quite specific layout sets for different purposes.
When switching to “Print Multiple Layouts” in the Print Dialog, I can toggle certain layouts on and off which is great! But whenever I want to change any of those toggles (even if I want to deactivate many of those layouts), the relevant layout is rendered as preview which in my file takes up to 60 seconds. So unchecking 5 of 10 layouts takes up to 5 minutes which hurts quite a bit. Even more so because I have to do it again next time I want to print the same set.
To overcome this, I’d have two suggestions for added functionality in the Print Dialog and I quickly threw together a possible UI design to illustrate what I’m thinking about:
[Very important and maybe not so difficult to implement?]:
A toggle to switch the Preview Update during layout selection on and off. If one really wants to flip throug the previews there are still the arrows above the preview window to do so.
[Maybe a bit more involved?]:
A dropdown selector and connected “Save…”, “Import…” and “Export…”-Buttons to save and load Layout Sets to and from the opened file (maybe to/from Document User Data?) and Import/Export them from/to other files. The routine could switch all layouts off, search for Layout Names that are switched on in the saved Layout Set and give a Message box if it can’t find some of the layouts in the set.
Hey good people from McNeel,
do you think it would be possible to add these proposals to the Print Dialog?
Would be great to hear what you think about this!
Hi @romio82 I can see where waiting on those previews would be annoying. I’m wondering if you’d have any better success using the Layouts panel to select the layouts for printing? There will still be 1 preview draw when the dialog opens, but at least all of the layouts would be established and selected for printing.
Run the Layouts command and then select a few layouts from the panel and click the Printer icon to send them to printing. I realize that a sheet set manager of some sort is more ideal than this suggestion, but I’m trying to think of something that might speed you up for today.
Hey @Trav,
thank you very much for that hint, I didn’t have the Print button in the Layouts panel on the radar.
That pretty much solves my first proposal (although it would still be great to have the toggle in the Print Dialog
Of course a fully fledged sheet set manager would be awesome - but maybe even an additional column in the Layout panel with “Print” toggles would suffice, with some functionality to save and load different layout sets as described in mey second proposal above… In my workflow that would be absolutely enough already…
Thank you!
