Assembly Printing
The program can temporarily add up to two text fields with additional information when printing, using the settings (tab 'Drawing Settings'). One of the two texts is predefined as a date/time stamp, and the other one is freely configurable (for example, you can use it to print colored text "DRAFT - NOT FOR PRODUCTION" on the sheet to avoid misunderstandings). These temporary text fields will be removed from the drawing after printing.
Print, Export PDF, Export DWG, Export DXF
The Assembly Printing dialog also supports batch export to PDF, AutoCAD DWG, and DXF. The corresponding buttons can be activated independently. The program will print or export all selected drawings into the chosen formats. The buttons with the configuration names next to PDF/DWG/DXF determine which of the associated configurations should be used in each case. The export functions use the respective options defined in the Settings dialog.
Search Options
Before starting the search, you can specify whether the search function should recursively search through all hierarchy levels of the assembly or only search up to a certain depth. Level 0 means that only the drawings directly associated with the assembly file will be searched. Level 1 includes the components and sub-assemblies contained within the main assembly. Level 2 will also search the components (and any existing sub-assemblies) within the sub-assemblies of Level 1, and so on.
Components of assemblies declared as phantom assemblies are treated as if they were one level higher. For example, the drawings of the components belonging to a phantom sub-assembly will also be searched when the search is limited to Level 1, even though the components technically belong to Level 2. In this case, since the assembly is defined as a phantom, its elements will still be considered in the search.
If a sub-assembly or component within the assembly appears multiple times at different levels, the highest level is considered. For instance, a component that is directly assembled in the main assembly (Level 1) but also appears as a component within one of the sub-assemblies (Level 2) will be counted as Level 1.
Click the "Search" button to start the search process.
Filter
After the search is completed, the found drawings will be displayed in the list. You can activate the filter options to reduce the displayed list of drawings to relevant files. Changes to the filter settings will be applied directly to the list.
Level (max): Only drawings whose referenced model is at most at the specified level will be displayed. For example, if the value is set to 1, the drawings of components at Level 2 will not be listed.
Orientation: Display only portrait format, only landscape format, or both.
Format: All formats or only a specific sheet format that appears in the list.
Drucker Zuordnung
Opens the dialog Printer Assignment. In that dialog, you can assign matching printers to your common sheet formats. The program uses the assignment table to automatically send all drawing sheets to the device assigned for that sheet size.
Copies
Here you can specify whether each sheet is printed only once or multiple copies are printed.
Print / Export
This button initiates the print command. All drawings selected in the list will be printed using the selected configuration. Please note that the print function requires a proper printer assignment. The program will then select the appropriate device for each sheet format based on the table.
List
This section displays all drawings found for the assembly.
Selection Commands
With the 3 buttons, you can select all listed drawings, clear all selections, or invert the current selections.
Show Only Existing
The program searches for drawings that have the same name and are located in the same path as the assembly's model files. If this option is selected, only the files that actually exist will be listed. Otherwise, all drawing names derived from the model names will be displayed, and the missing drawings will be indicated in a lighter gray shade in the list.
Cancel
Closes the dialog.
Project Search
In the program's Settings, you can specify which search algorithm to use. The simple variant compares only the file names of the model and drawing files and lists drawings with the same names for all components of the assembly. If this condition is not met in your case, you can instruct the program to use the project-based search to find the drawing files. During this process, the program searches for all drawing files within the active project (optionally including the project's workgroup search folders) and compares the file references contained in them with the components of the active assembly. To do this, the drawings need to be opened in Inventor (invisibly in the background). This process takes significantly longer than the simple name comparison. The progress and results of the project search are displayed in the dialog shown above. You can transfer all drawings with the status "Referenced" to the "Assembly Printing" dialog by closing the dialog with "Next" after the search is completed.