Application Printer Preference for Letter vs A4

Hi there, I was trying to find where I can change the printer default from A4 to Letter in application preferences so that I don’t have to change the preferences for every individual printed tile PDF under advanced (see attached).

Would someone please be able to point me in the right direction, or does this option not exist currently?

Thank you, Sandra

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Hi @SandraB

I normally view the pdf pages in tiles and change the settings there, if I’m creating the PDF directly from the program. But then you need to create the Layout and go to File > Preview > Preview Tiled:

I haven’t really explored the PDF option from Piece mode yet.

Hi Grace,

That is another view of the same thing. I like the view. I am choosing the PDF option, bc for me, the printer accepts draft/ grayscale from printing from a PDF, but not using the printer settings within Seamly for some reason. I was hoping that I could change the default under application preferences…but I don’t see any printer related settings. Somehow the program is defaulting to A4, but we don’t use A4 in Canada.

Sandra

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The page size should be determined by the selected printer, not the application. Not sure if the app is incorrectly overriding this ot not? Currently I have no printers connected so i can’t check what’s it’s doing. When I get a chance I’ll try and take a look again at the print options.

BTW… If you choose to Export as Tiled PDF, the app will remember the last used export format.

export)

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Hi Douglas, thank you for the reminder to check my printer default settings in Windows. I did that and it is “Letter”, then I checked Seamly and it was still A4.

But, when you told me about the export, I selected “Export As” from the layout panel and changed A4 to Letter. Then I tried the preview tiled to PDF and the print tiled to PDF. Guess what? Both now say “Letter”. Closing Seamly and re-trying still shows “Letter” as the default.

Now how about that?

So, I have Seamly defaulting to “Letter”, not “A4” as I wanted. Yeah!

Thanks!

Sandra

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Wow! very well done, @SandraB. Thank you for sharing :grin:

Sandra buenas tardes desde Colombia: Por si tiene alguna utilidad, te comento mi experiencia al respecto de imprimir a tamaño real las piezas del patrón, para usarlas en le confección de una prenda. Si cambias en ese caso el tamaño del papel de A4 a carta, cuando unas las hojas para armar tu patrón, éste se desconfigura, o sea queda con medidas incorrectas. Por eso yo cuando necesito imprimir todas las piezas se un patrón a tamaño real, para confeccionar una prenda, dejo el tamaño del papel en A4 e imprimo en una papel tamaño oficio o legal. Espero contribuir en algo con este mensaje. Feliz resto de día para todos.

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Buenas Dias,

My spanish is very poor unfortunately. :grinning:

For me, printing in A4 is larger than letter and prevents the grids on the PDF from printing that I use to match the multiple pages together. I do print a 2"x2" square which I use to confirm that the pattern pieces are printed in the correct dimensions.

Perhaps there is another difference between our systems that I don’t know about. It is working great for me now. Thank you for reaching out,

Sandra

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Well, as I suspected the app is erroneously overriding the printer settings when “printing” using the last used tiled pdf “export” app setting. Not my doing. Keep in mind the export setting is for creating a file, not sending to the printer. Theoretically you should be able to use “legal” size paper in your printer, export a pattern as a tiled pdf, then using the system outside the app - print the tiled pdf file without any scaling - resulting in extra white space. On the other hand if the printer was set to 5x7, and you tried to print the same file - you will have issues. In other words the export setting should only affect what size the “tiles” of the pdf are - not what size of paper is in your printer.

What should happen is if you select Print → tiled pdf, the tile size should be what the default printer is set at, NOT what the export as page size is set at. Obviously as we have found out, unless you do an ExportAs to change the initial hard coded A4, you would always have to change the page size if you only use Print As.

So… What I should do is change the Print as to use the default printer page size, and not the Export As pdf page size.

That being said… whether one uses PrintAs → tiled PDF or Export As → tiled PDF your probably going to use whatever size paper you use. Which also means if sharing PDF’s it’s probably best to just export as PDF, and let others tile print the PDF with what paper size they use.

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