QCad User Reference Manual

# 9. Printing

To print a drawing with QCad, you need to specify a scale factor for the printout. This can be 1:1 or any other desired scale. Before printing you should always switch to the print preview mode. In the print preview, you can adjust the scale factor and position the drawing on the paper.

## 9.1. Print Preview

Opens a print preview window for the current drawing.

Toolbar:

Menu:

    File - Print Preview

Options Toolbar:

The print preview shows how your drawing will look in the printout. Use the combo box in the options toolbar to adjust the scale factor. The first button at the right of the combo box toggles the black/white mode. When enabled all lines will appear black on the drawing rather than colored or gray. Use the button in the middle to automatically center the drawing on the paper or the button at the right to automatically fit the drawing on paper.

You can also move the paper around by dragging it with the left mouse button.

Figure 11: Print Preview.

## 9.2. Printing a Drawing

Toolbar:

Menu:

    File - Print

Hotkey:

    Ctrl-P

Use this command to print a drawing out of the print preview. A setup dialog is shown before anything is printed. Use this dialog to choose a printer. Do not change the paper format at this stage. The paper format can be changed in the drawing options before printing. If you change the paper format at this stage, the printout will not match the print preview.

### Printing to Files

You can check "Print to file" in the printer setup dialog to create a file instead of actually printing on paper. Under Unix systems this creates a Postscript (PS) file that can also be converted to PDF. Under Windows a raw binary print file is created (PRN). The format of this file depends on the print driver. To create PS files under Windows, please install a Postscript printer driver such as "APS-PS" which comes with Windows.
To create high quality PDF files, you can use the menu 'File' - 'PDF Export' (QCad 2.1.0.1 and later).