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  #41  
Old 11-23-2016, 01:15 PM
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whulsey whulsey is offline
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For myself I usually print the instruction sheets. Like having them there to view when needed and in different orientations which is my little weird thing especially for diagrams or photos. Sometimes looking at them upside down lets me think about them differently.
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  #42  
Old 11-23-2016, 02:10 PM
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bloomohio bloomohio is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cfuruti View Post
I know that's tongue-in-cheek, but we are considering usability, not technical details. One doesn't need to understand what's inside a .doc, .xls, .odt, or even more mundane, a .zip file, to discuss their features. Oh, try opening an uncompressed .svg file; unlike PDF, it has (except extensions like Inkscape's embedded images) no binary blobs, so it's much easier to parse, even in Notepad.
AS THEY SAY IN UK here! Here! meaning I agree with you 110%!
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  #43  
Old 11-23-2016, 02:15 PM
cfuruti cfuruti is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kugelfang View Post
For those people who like to tweak the graphics and work in the SVG format, is it more convenient to be provided with one large SVG file (which may have multiple print pages in it) or multiple SVG files where each file equals a printable page?
...
For my 15 page model, the manual method takes about 20 minutes to create separate, printable SVG files. Is it worth the effort? Do most people print off the instruction sheets?

--jeff
IMHO just having the SVG available is a bonus, therefore the alternative with least creator effort would be ok provided easily available, reasonably standard tools like Inkscape can use it.
Multipage support in Inkscape is iffy since in practice it's not in the SVG standard, so I suppose your solution used some extension or simulated pages with layers.

Regarding instructions, having them printed is a great convenience, but because ink is expensive for me, it's a compromise: I'm much more willing to print black & white 3D drawings than color renderings or (even worse, but admittedly much easier to create) photographic steps.
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  #44  
Old 11-27-2016, 10:53 AM
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Kugelfang Kugelfang is offline
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Quote:
... so I suppose your solution used some extension or simulated pages with layers....
Yes. I have a layer which I use as a template for letter sized pages which shows a 7x10 print area. On this layer is a matrix of objects named 'page1','page2', etc.

The following shell script iteratively opens Inkscape, selects page# object, sets the viewport canvas to the page#, saves the file, closes the file, exits Inkscape. Next the script calls Inkscape (without opening the GUI) and exports the veiw port to a page#.pdf file.

Once all the pages have been exported, the script uses the program pdftk to combine the separate pages into a multi-page pdf and then deletes the individual pages.

It's kludgey and slow, but it keeps me from making stupid mistakes exporting the pages by hand.

Here's the Linux bash script if anyone is interested in implementing it on their computer (I imagine it would look quite similar in a Windows bat file):

Code:
#!/bin/bash
# Extract PDF pages from large Inkscape file

#change to reflect file to be saved as pdf
in_file="*1122.svg"
out_file='LZ-17_20161122b.pdf'
page_count=15

number=1
file_list=''

echo "*** Starting PDF export of $in_file to $out_file ($page_count pages) ***"

while [ $number -le $page_count ]; do

  #these verb commands only work with the Inkscape GUI open
  ( inkscape $in_file --select=page$number --verb=ZoomSelection --verb=FitCanvasToSelection --verb=FileSave --verb=FileClose --verb=FileQuit ) 

  #export command only works with Inkscape GUI closed -- it exports the canvas area which is selected above
  ( inkscape $in_file --export-pdf page$number.pdf )

  file_list+=" page$number.pdf"
  echo "    File page$number.pdf created"

  number=$((number + 1))
done

echo "    Concatenating pages to a single PDF file."
(pdftk $file_list cat output $out_file)
echo "    Removing individual page files."
(rm $file_list)
echo "*** Done ***"
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  #45  
Old 01-10-2017, 10:35 AM
kcorbin kcorbin is offline
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If you begin the design with vector software then it is very easy to output it as an svg or as a pdf.

With svg even if you scale up or down the size of the image the line weight will remain at the same size. This is very critical when it comes to outputting the image to a cutting machine such as a laser cutter. Vector cutting lines need to be presented to the machines in hairline width and with that format they remain as hairline width despite scaling up or down.

In the wider world of paper crafting where people such as those who do scrapbooking offer downloads of projects the offering is typically available in both .pdf and also .svg as many people are now using electronic cutting machines to cut out around the images and also to score the fold lines.

The newer hobby craft cutters are being produced with two cutting heads allowing one to be for a knife cut all the way through the material and the other to be set for shallower cuts of for holding a tool to impress fold lines.

So if you are designing from scratch you might want to consider using .svg files to get all of that information into the file so they can be cut by people who own the desktop cutting machines. That will expand your market of clients to pick up those who are into the "machine age". Even within this forum you will see people discussing experimenting with cutting machines.

So my answer is you need to present both file types as an option for the customers to choose from instead of trying to decide on only one type. Do both, it is an advantage for increasing your income and that makes it worth doing.
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