: How to send tiled pages to virtual printer in DIN A0 Format with default margins? My problem is closely connected to my old problem here, however it is a new question so I open a new thread.

@Gail6891361

There is a even more custom, somewhat brute force, alternative. I dont use it often, i can preprocess stuff like this in my RIP by dropping custom postscript into the stream, but it does work.


Make a new illustrator document
Make a number of art boards with the size you need.
Place your real document inside this document.

Important: If you do not use place option then you can not use this file as a template for other files as you can easily change the placed files later in your life.
Move the contents to one artboard then use clipping mask to restrict it.

Duplicate and repeat until you have all artboards done. Use numeric translation for accurate work.
Once you have the template done then change artwork in the links panel.




Making this once takes about 5 minutes. Yes it could be scripted.

The benefit of this method is that you can do overlap and mark in alignment guides at perimeters so that it becomes easier for you to align and cut your slices. Also this works with multiple sizes of paper. The downside is that this only works with one image size, although the same template is easy to re purpose for smaller fields.

Of you can just get dedicated software for this

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@Margaret771

If I quess right, you are not printing a long life wall size artwork poster, but a model sheet that you are using only as a cutting guide. If I remember right, you planned the same earlier, but tiling A4s, not A0s.

Probably you can agree with the printhouse that they can leave the 5mm margin simply unprinted because you can define your tileable files to have several centimeters wide overlaps.40mm wide overlaps do not increase the number of the pages. See NOTE3.

Some of the problems are still there with bigger papers. You still need an external coordinate system to be sure that the physical tiling is done right. The continuity is not enough. It can be enough for artwork, but building something needs reliable dimensions and angles, too. You cannot be sure that the printed pages have right sizes and are equally oriented when compared to X and Y directions in your drawing. See NOTE1 !

If I quessed right, the printing doesn't lose its value, if you print some auxiliary lines on the same paper. Add some lines that you could construct exactly (=accurately enough) without any printings. Triangles and rectangles with diagonal lines are good, because you need no angle measurements, only lengths for exact construction.

You can measure the lines in Illustrator. Place the papers so that the measured lines are reconstructed. Then your whole printing is tiled ok.

Essentially this is, what user Rafael suggested in his answer to your previous question.

A random example:



You should be able to construct the red rectangle with diagonals within 1mm onto your floor using only the measured lengths. Tension some wires as the lines. Then place the paper so that the printed red lines fit with the wires. Use other lines as the extra aid for continuity.

To see continuous lines, the unprinted marginal areas (about 5mm) over the lines should be cut off.

NOTE1: You shoud take the printing accuracy spec from the printhouse before you order. Because you use paper size A0, you have much less room for scale fine-tuning by placing the papers than if you used smaller size.

NOTE2: If your actual shape is symmetric, you have theoretical possiblity to save 50% of the printing by having only one half and flipping it.

NOTE3: The printhouse can be serious when they want 5mm wide margins. Their printing software can notice that there's something in the unprintable area and their system or workflow policy do not allow the printing. You can try to clean manually wide enough areas near the edges. You do not lose anything if you have overlaps. Try the following:


print with a PDF printer as tiled A0's having full pages and 40mm wide overlaps
open each PDF page in Illustrator separately. Release the clipping masks and ungroup, repeat these until your page contains separately editable paths - delete all released clipping masks
take the scissors -tool and split the paths near the wanted margin border
delete all beyond the allowed area. Releasing the clipping masks probably had created long tails over the artboard border
double check that you have not made any accidental scalings or moves
export the marginalized page as separate A0 PDF.


If scissors seem too much work, you alternatively can add a rectangular clipping mask that has sides 10mm shorter than the A0 page.

If this also is too much, then give to the printshop your 3 meters wide PDF and ask them print it as tileable A0s with overlaps that you see necessary.

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@Berryessa866

Note; some of this will depend on your print drivers and OS (which more technical problems with may be better asked about on Super User), but should be similar enough regardless.



When printing the tiles you need to select "Tile Imageable Areas" instead of "Tile Full Pages", which does exactly as you wish. It relies on you having the correct paper size (including the printable area) selected though, which I assume you don't have.

It looks like you're using Windows, which I have no idea about, but on a Mac you can define custom sizes directly from the Page Setup dialog (bottom left button of the Print dialog). You simply need to enter the correct paper size and margin size:



Then with that paper size selected (I had to do so through the Page Setup dialog and set "Defined by Driver" in the Print dialog; how you do so will depend on your print driver and OS), back in the Print dialog you should see the margins correctly in the preview:



Then print with the "Tile Imageable Areas" option:



The resulting PDF is then tiled with the correct margins:



Note, I did test this with more appropriate artwork to confirm the tiling was correct, I simply used a solid color here as it's easier to see the margins. I also tested this on both a virtual printer (to PDF) and a physical office printer.



Another option if you can't get this to work and absolutely must have the margins...


Set up a page size that is the size of printable area you need (i.e. page size − margins).
Print the tiles as full page tiles.
Increase the page size of the resulting PDF (without distorting the artwork) to the full page size. (I'm not at a computer to check and can't remember how to do so in Acrobat or if you can in Reader, at very least you could open the PDF in Illustrator, increase artboard sizes then re-save.)

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