it worked again! I've no idea why a 2.5 MB JPG can be so much better
than a 26.5 MB BMP.

BMP is a very old very simple file format that's a good 30 years old and
often not compressed at all. GIF would probably come out smaller still as
JPG is designed to compressed photographs with some fuzzing allowed while
GIF is designed to compress sharp bitmaps.

Alan

Tony,

for an experiment I exported three layouts of different sizes to BMP. By using a DPI value of 25 I get good results in all cases. Maybe that helps you. I fnot I'd like to have your plan and an exported bitmap file for further experiments.

Regards
Martin

Am 19.01.2020 um 00:03 schrieb Tony Scott:

The issue of the quality of PDF depends on the resolution of the virtual printer. I am not sure about Windows built in capabilities but I read there may be “quality” settings as well as custom size settings available.

Certainly there are third-party offerings with more control as well. On Mac setting to a very large paper size and having 600 dpi allows a high quality image.

i used this to produce banner prints of my 20ft by 12ft layout in two strips at half-size and then 2x the output for printing. So it can be done. Notably though, the standard size will only be like a sheet of normal paper which is much smaller than the screen and often a 300 dpi resolution.

Adam

 

Thank you to all those who responded. I tried all the possible outputs and found that .xti, .dxf and .prn files are unable to be read by PaintShop. The Windows 10 'MS Print to PDF' produces a file that can be read but it is extremely rough with low resolution and more or less useless. The only option seems to be a BMP file which, apart from being very large, looks very disjointed at ordinary screen resolution viewing - it has to be zoomed way up to get a good image but then you can only see a very small portion of the plan on the screen. All a bit frustrating really.

Cheers
Tony

On Windows 10 I have a "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer that should work without installing any additional software.

Regards
Martin

Am 17.01.2020 um 18:15 schrieb emrldsky:

If GIMP is your choice of editor, it can import SVG - so that might be a way instead of PDF.  https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-using-paths-and-svg.html

Adam

As Dwayne says, until V5.2 it is lines, curves and bezier lines. If you have a closed space then also polygons which can be filled or not. Polygons are not curved edged but by having enough nodes you can simulate curves.

Coming in V5.2 there are curved edge polylines and polygons. A polyline is an open polygon - the closing line is missing.  They obviously can't be filled.

The curves are produced by specifying either a smooth node or a rounded node. A smooth node is constructed by creating a bezier from the halfway points between the nodes while a rounded node does that but with equal length sides (using in the shorter of the two sides) - this produces an arc rather than a complex curve.

Also in V5.2 dotted, dashed, and dash dotted (lines, curves, bezier polygons and polylines).  

Adam

Robert

as far as the "table edge" command, Not in V5.1.2a or earlier releases and no way to convert.

Maybe in the next V5.2 release or V6 release.

Your best option now is a combination of straight, curve, polyline and bezier lines
--
Dwyane Ward

Id on windows, install the "Bullzip Printer". It works quite well and offers a bunch of printing options. It does go to a file.

Peace,

Mike G.

This has always been a tricky and frustrating feature of XTrackCAD. Saving to PDF only helps if the application you want to do more editing in can open PDF files. My preference for this type of work is GIMP - it's does 90% of what Photoshop can and it's free.

There is always a way to get the output you expect with Export to Bitmap, but it takes a lot of trial and error manipulation of the output file dpi and some settings in Options > Display and Options > Preferences > Min. Grid Spacing. There is no documentary guidance, so all you can do is tweak settings, export, repeat until you get the result you want.

I do export one layer at a time, so they can be edited manipulated independently in the editing software.

I did this once by creating the table shape in Photo Shop and importing it into XTrackCAD as an image. BTW I never actually built this layout. I'm only posting this as an example of how you can include your table shape in XTrackCAD.

Ok thanks. It seems like it's not operating system dependent. You just need a print driver for it, like the Adobe PDF Printer.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/print-to-pdf.html

Some programs (like Quicken) have their own PDF print driver built in.

Curved table edges are everywhere in books and magazines, but I cant figure out how to draw one in Xtrac.
Can this be done? Can I convert a line to a table edge, perhaps in "describe?"

B

It is Operating System dependent. To XTrackCAD you are simply Printing. 

In many OSes, you can then have a "PDF Printer" that creates a PDF file rather than putting ink on paper - it is installed as a printer driver. 

On Macs at least and possibly Linux, this option is built-in as a printer called "Print to File".  Output Format: PDF - the other options are PostScript or SVG.  I assume SVG may be useful as well (v means vector) - although I have never used that myself.

Adam

There are a couple of answers here,
 first lets assume you have track or buildings etc already on a layer, you want to separate some of this into different layers;  you do this 
1) using the select tool, select everything you want in a different layer
2) go up to the tool bar and change the layer you are working on to the layer you want the info to go to
3) under the edit menu select " Move to current Layer'
4) deselect all and everything you wanted to move will be in a different layer

hope this make sense one of my first inputs to try and share info from what I have learned

The Layer drop down shows which layer new tracks will be added to

The buttons on the right control which layers will be visible
So to add tracks to layer 2, select '2' from the drop down list.

The Layers dialog on the Manage menu lets you name layers among other things


The 'Move to Current Layer' menu item on the Edit menu moves all Selected tracks to the current layer

On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 07:02 AM, Adam Richards wrote:

print to PDF

How do you print to PDF? I don't see any option for that and there is no mention of it in the help file.

Layer Notes - 

1. Layers are logical groupings, there is no implied ordering of the objects within layers in the visual plane. When an object is drawn it is strictly in the order oldest to newest - except where it has been moved in that order with "Above" and "Below" - which are really "Move to Front" and "Move to Back". If you want to impose an order yourself, you can "Select All in Current Layer" for each layer in turn and then use these two commands to move all the objects as a set.
2. Layers are made visible/hidden by selecting or deselecting their "toggle" icon or by use of the Manage->Layers interface that also allows Naming and freezing (making all objects on the layer unselectable). Freezing is very useful for background elements you don't want to move accidentally. 
3. Layers can be used to color objects. This can override the Color that the object has. There is a setting to control this separately for Tracks and for non-tracks (lines, curves, polygons). Pre V5.2, the color of all layers were by this single setting. This means structures would also be affected. At V5.2, each layer will have an override so that, for example, structures can be in an unaffected layer but tracks can be colored by track zone.  If you find you changed an object's color in Properties but it didn't change on screen - go look under Options->Display.
4. The Layer is assigned at object creation time from the "current layer" selected.  Note that you can't select a hidden layer or frozen layer - it has to be both visible and unfrozen to be current.  You select the Current Layer using the dropdown layer list at the top of the screen. 
5. Changing the assigned layer of the objects is done either object by object in Describe/Properties (Layer is usually at the bottom) or by selecting the desired layer as the current layer, selecting all the additional object(s) you want in it and then using "Move to Current Layer".

Adam