vectorcraft/docs/print-tiling.md

Print a large poster across multiple pages

Overview

Use tiled printing to spread a large poster, sign or sewing pattern across several sheets of A4, Letter or other paper. VectorCraft divides the drawing into numbered tiles at the scale you choose. Overlap repeats part of the drawing on adjacent sheets to help you align them after printing.

Print a poster on multiple sheets

1. Open your drawing in VectorCraft. For a full-size pattern, check that the drawing has the intended dimensions before printing.
2. Choose File → Print… to open VectorCraft's Print dialog. In Printer, select your printer or PDF File to save the tiled job as a PDF.
3. In General, under Artboards, choose All or Range: to select the artboards to print. For example, use Range: 1 for the first artboard. Choose Ignore Artboards (all the art as one page) only if you want to tile the bounds of all the artwork instead of individual artboards.
4. Under Media, set Size to the paper loaded in the printer, such as A4, Letter or a Japanese paper (B5 (JIS), Japanese Postcard, Japanese Envelope #3). Choose Custom to enter Width and Height. Auto-Rotate (turn the paper to each artboard) is on by default; turn it off to choose a fixed Orientation, such as Portrait or Landscape.
5. In Advanced, set Unprintable margin to allow for the edges your printer cannot print. VectorCraft uses one value for all four edges; use a value that covers the printer's largest required margin. The default is zero, and VectorCraft does not read this value from the printer.
6. Return to General. Under Options, set Scaling to Tile Imageable Areas or Tile Full Pages (see Choose a tiling mode). Set Scale, both W and H, to 100% to keep the drawing's size. Use the same percentage in both fields to keep its proportions; larger percentages enlarge the drawing and can require more sheets.
7. Set Overlap to repeat a strip along adjoining tiles. For example, 10 mm gives room for alignment. Length fields accept units such as mm and in. Overlap must be less than half the smaller tile dimension; increasing it can increase the sheet count.
8. Leave Tile Range empty initially. Use the Previous page and Next page arrows beneath the preview to inspect each sheet. The label identifies its artboard and tile; the preview also shows the paper size and scale. Check Summary for warnings or invalid settings.
9. Keep Tile Range empty to print every tile, or enter a range such as 1-3, 5 to print a subset. Check the preview again after changing the range.
10. Click Print. With a printer selected, VectorCraft sends the laid-out job to the system's print service. With PDF File selected, it asks where to save the PDF, with one page per printed tile for each copy in composite output. Done keeps the print settings with the document without printing; save the document to retain them for next time.

The tiling controls belong to VectorCraft's Print dialog on Windows, macOS and Linux. Setup…, beside Printer, opens the system's printer settings, whose interface varies by platform. Set tiling in VectorCraft's Scaling list. Keep the printer's paper settings consistent with Media. In the web app, printing goes through the browser's print dialog; PDF File downloads the PDF.

For a paper proof, select PDF File and click Print, then open the saved PDF to inspect its pages before sending it to a printer. When printing that PDF, keep its page size and scale rather than applying another fit-to-page reduction. For a sewing pattern, measure a known length on a printed sheet before printing the full job.

Choose a tiling mode

Scaling	How it divides the drawing	When to use it
Tile Full Pages	Each tile uses the full paper width and height. Adjacent tiles advance by that size minus Overlap.	Use when you need a grid based on whole sheets, such as with a printer that supports the required borderless paper setting. On a printer with unprintable edges, artwork near tile edges can be lost unless sufficient overlap covers those gaps.
Tile Imageable Areas	Each tile uses the paper area inside Unprintable margin. Adjacent tiles advance by that smaller size minus Overlap.	Use for printers with unprintable edges. Set the margin in Advanced so the tiles account for those edges; this can require more sheets than full-page tiling.

With Unprintable margin set to zero, the two modes use the same tile dimensions. Neither mode makes a printer capable of borderless printing. Fit to Page scales an artboard onto a single sheet; choose a tile mode to keep a large drawing spread across sheets.

Check the layout on the canvas

1. Set up tiling in File → Print…, then click Done to keep the settings.
2. Choose View → Show Print Tiling. The canvas shows each sheet's paper edge and a dashed, numbered imageable area. Tiles excluded by Tile Range appear dimmer. The overlay uses the saved print settings; it does not print anything.
3. Select the Print Tiling Tool. In the default toolbar, press and hold the Hand Tool button in the Navigate group to open its tool list, then choose Print Tiling Tool. The tool also shows the overlay while it is active.
4. Drag on the canvas to position the grid. The pointer places the top-left corner of a page's imageable area and snaps near artboard edges. Tiles extend left and up as needed to cover the drawing, so that page may not be tile 1 after the move. Reopen File → Print… to check the resulting pages and tile numbers. Dragging the dialog's preview does not reposition tiled pages.

To restore the default grid position, double-click on the canvas with Print Tiling Tool active, or double-click the tool's toolbar button. Alternatively, reopen File → Print… and click Reset beneath Placement when the dialog says The Print Tiling tool placed the pages. Click Done to keep that change. View → Hide Print Tiling hides the overlay after switching to another tool.

Print only selected tiles

Tile Range uses numbers starting at 1, across each row from left to right, then down. For a grid with three columns and two rows, the first row is 1, 2, 3 and the second is 4, 5, 6. Enter 2, 5 to print the middle column, or 1-3, 5 to print the first row and tile 5. Leave the field empty to print all tiles.

Range: under Artboards selects drawings; Tile Range selects sheets within each chosen drawing. Tile numbering restarts for each artboard, and the same tile range applies to each one. To reprint one damaged sheet of one artboard, select that artboard with Range: and its tile with Tile Range. A tile number must exist on every selected artboard. Changing paper, scale, margin, overlap or grid position can change the grid and its numbering; check again before reprinting.

Assemble the printed sheets

Lay out the sheets in tile order. Align repeated artwork in the overlap, trim unprinted edges as needed, and tape or glue the sheets together. Print a pair of adjacent tiles first to check the scale, margins and overlap before committing to a large job.

Troubleshooting

• The preview shows only one page. It displays one sheet at a time. Use the arrows and check the count beneath it. If the count is one, check Tile Range, the chosen artboards, paper size and scale: the drawing may fit on one tile.
• The image shrinks to one sheet. Change Scaling from Fit to Page to a tile mode and check both scale percentages. Also check for another fit-to-page setting when printing a saved PDF.
• Artwork is missing along sheet edges. Check the printer's unprintable margins. Use Tile Imageable Areas with a suitable Advanced → Unprintable margin, or allow enough overlap in full-page tiling to cover the missing edges. Check that the physical paper matches Media; a zero margin does not remove a printer's hardware limits.
• No tiling boundaries appear on the canvas. Keep the settings with Done, then enable View → Show Print Tiling or select Print Tiling Tool. If the settings are invalid, the overlay has no pages to draw; reopen Print and check Summary.
• The job has the wrong number of pages. Check Artboards, Tile Range, Copies and Skip Blank Artboards. Paper size, orientation, scale, margins and overlap affect the grid. Under Output, Mode → Separations produces a page per enabled ink; use Composite for an ordinary poster. The dialog preview shows one copy; the saved PDF includes all copies.

Related documentation

• Printing and PDF file output — command reference.
• Print tiling — overlay and positioning command reference.
• Print settings — paper, scaling and output settings reference.