Re: How to set up to create a diagram to print on one sheet?

[Michael Ross <michael e ross gmail com>]

Chris,

The Dia paradigm is a little different.  You draw up what ever you like then you size the page however you want around it.  

My drill is like this:

You may need to make the page break lines a contrasting color to your background (in the Preferences/View Defaults/Page Breaks menu).  preferences persist from session to session so mine are always how I like them.  Background color is under Diagram Defaults, and grid line color is under Grid Lines.

I set the Page Set Up to Letter, Landscape, all margins 0.5in top, bottom, left & right,. and a Scale of around 35% (depending on the monitor I am using).  This gives me a page about the size and shape of my screen.

Whatever I draw inside those lines will print on one page.

Another approach is to turn off the page breaks by giving then the same color as you background, and just draw whatever you like, and when completed set the page breaks to contrats again, pick paper size and scale so it all fits - all after the fact.

Some notes on margins that a lot of people assume differently.

What is displayed on screen is the printed area of the diagram.  If you have one inch margins set all around, then the printed page will have a 1in margin around.  For example an 8.5 x 11 letter page would have a printed area of 6.5 x 9. Set margins to 0.5in and the printed area will expand out to 7.5 x 10.

If you cross page break lines then the printing will segment into the number of pages you have with diagram entities visible inside them.  If you turn on and off the visibility of a layer that is alone in one page area, then it will  not print.  A useful function to me.

Hope that is useful info.

Mike

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Chris Green <cl isbd net> wrote:

I want to create some diagrams which I will print on A4 paper.

What's the easiest way to set up Dia so it just shows me basically
that one sheet of paper in a reasonably straightforward way?

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Chris Green
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