Printing Large Diagrams

Many diagrams created in Cradle projects can be large. This is especially true for Hierarchy Diagrams (HIDs), particularly when the HID shows many levels and/or shows a large number of linked items, and/or shows a lot of data for each item.

Cradle can store large diagrams in project databases, and provides a wide range of zoom levels and the starmap so you can view them effectively on your screen, no matter how large they are and no matter how small your screen may be.

Cradle assists the effective printing of large diagrams. If you printed all of a large diagram on a single A4 or letter page, then the diagram would be unreadable. Instead, consider one or more of the following hints and tips:

1. Use as large a paper size as possible, even if you have to shrink it later. Thus, try printing to D or E (or the ISO sizes A0 or A1) and then print to your device. This may give you a better font scaling.
2. Print across multiple sheets of paper. Cradle can print diagrams over up to 999 horizontal sheets by 999 vertical sheets. This will, of course, mean that the font size on each sheet is larger. If you are printing to Word, then each of these sheets will be a separate page in the resulting Word document. You can see this because after the diagram has been printed and Word is opened, page forward through the Word document to see the individual pages.
3. In the Graphics Print options, under Print Format in the Graphics Print Options dialogue you can set the Text Scale: options for Connectors and Objects. This is a scaling factor that is applied to the as calculated font size for the text drawn on lines (the connectors) and inside boxes (the objects). Try setting this to 1.5 or 2.0 and see if this is any better. If you want to make this change permanent, then select Write... and OK in the Graphics Print Options dialogue in Toolset.
4. If printing a HID, try to reduce the complexity of the diagram. You may be able to do this by reducing the number of boxes by changing the Owner option for the diagram to, for example, not show both baselined and non-baselined items.
5. If printing a HID, you can control the type(s) of items that are shown in the diagram. Try removing as many of the To item types as you can to reduce the number of boxes drawn in the diagram and thereby reduce its size.
6. If printing a HID and you are not pivoting the diagram, do so as it makes the diagram less short and fat or tall and thin, and makes its overall shape more square which reduces the scaling factor being used to draw it and therefore reduces its overall size.