Lesson 4 Printing

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Until now we have created a bill of materials with three items. All these items are linked to a product group in Product Information Center.
In this chapter we are going to print the bill of materials and the attached documentation.

Setting bill of materials properties
 

1. Select Page settings in the File menu. The Document properties window will be displayed.
2. Enter the following data on the General tab:
   Document title: 'Example bill of materials'
   Principal: 'End user'
   Client: 'Example client'
   Project: 'MatStream in 45 minutes'
3. Select the Properties tab
   On this tab you can add custom properties. In this example we are going to add the property 'Author' to the list.
   • Enter the value 'Author' at the Property field.
   • Enter your name at the Value field.
   • Select the button Add. The property will be added to the list.
4. Select the Revision tab
   • Enter the value '0' at the field Rev. (Revision zero).
   • Enter the value 'For Information' at the Description field.
5. Select the Header tab
   Here we are going to set the header text of the bill of materials. Most of the data for the header is already entered.
   • Search in the field, indicated with Center, the string 'Contact person: &[Project manager]'. Change 'Contact person:' to 'Author:' and delete the string variable '&[Project manager]'
   • Put the cursur right after'Author:'.
   • Above the text fields, there is a selection list with a disabled Add button near it. Select the property Author in this list and click the Add button. The string variable &[Author] will be inserted where the cursor was positioned (right after Author).
6. Select the Ok button to save the changes and close the window.

Printing the bill of materials
 

1. Scroll the bill of materials to the right, with the horizontal scroll bar, until you see a red and a grey vertical line.
   The grey line is the paper size that is available with the current printer and margin settings.
   The red line indicates the last column that will be printed.
   • You can resize the columns by pointing the mouse on the column header above the line that divides two columns.
   • Press the mouse button and move the mouse to the left or to the right. The size of the column changes.
   • If necessary you can change the column positions. You can drag the columns, which you don't want on the print out, to the right of the red line.
2. Select Print preview in the File menu.
3. Select the button with the printer icon . The bill of materials will be printed to the default Windows printer.

Printing the documentation

One of the most powerful features is of MatStream is automatically printing all the attached documentation.
The documentation will be separated by 'Coversheets'. The coversheet indicates to which item the printed documentation belong.

Setting the coversheets

Before we print the documentation, we have to setup the coversheet layout.
 

1. Select Coversheet settings in the Print menu. The window coversheet settings will be displayed. In this window we can determine what we want to be displayed on the coversheet.
2. When you have entered all the data as described in Setting bill of materials properties, you will see the following items in the list named Header data: 'Author', 'Project', 'Client', 'Principal', 'Document title'.
   • Select the following items by clicking their checkbox: 'Author', 'Project', 'Client'.
   • Place them in the next order with the arrowed buttons: 1.'Project', 2.'Client', 3.'Author'
3. We can leave the list named 'Item data' as it is.
4. Select the Ok button to save the changes and close the window.

We can preview the coversheets before we print them.
 

1. Select Preview coversheets in the Print menu. De preview will be displayed.
2. On the bottom left of the page you see 1 of 3. Scroll with the arrowed buttons to page 2. At the bottom of the preview you see the text: 'For documentation see item number 1'. Because the save paper option was enabled, in the caver sheet settings, does MatStream analyze if there is a previous item in the bill of materials with the same product link. When it finds such an item, MatStream refers to that item. With this option enabled, no documentation will be printed twice.
3. You don't have to print the coversheets yet. The coversheets will be automatically added to the documentation when we print them. So now we can close the preview, and resume with Printing attached documentation.

Printing attached documentation

Before we start printing the documentation, a few important notes...
 

1. MatStream does not print the attached document itself. MatStream calls the application that is linked to the particular file format, and sends a print command to the application.
2. The application that is linked to the file format and is used to print the document must support direct printing, without interference of the user. A few examples of supporting applications are: Microsoft® Word, Microsoft® Excel, Adobe® Acrobat Reader 4.0, Microsoft® Photo Editor. When there are .pdf files attached, you need to install at least version 4 of Adobe® Acrobat Reader.

Start printing
 

1. Make sure that there is no row selected in the bill of materials, by clicking a single cell somewhere on the bill of materials. When a row is selected, only the attached files of that row will be printed.
2. Select Print Attached Documents in the Print menu. After analyzing the data, a window will be displayed with the documents that will be printed.
3. Select the Go button to start the printing. MatStream will try print each document in the list. Therefore it will wait until a document is visible in the print queue before it continue with the next one.