After you’ve concluded the electrical schematic and the mechanical layout, as well as generated the reports with the project information, you may think the design is concluded. This article will teach you how to export and transform the design into a Smart PDF file, so that you may print it, send it to a client or share it with colleagues.
💡TIP: Before generating the Smart PDF file, it’s important to finish the project by adding up the newly inserted pages and page groups to update the index.
Now you are ready to export your project to PDF.
Export to PDF...
Go to Project Tab> Export;
Set options like below:
You can select a specific project page interval to be exported through the Pages button. In this case, we want to export the entire project, so we won’t make any changes;
In the Format option, select Portable document – PDF;
Click on the Options button;
In the Print style table, type in default.ctg;
In the button “…” next to the Output file, name the file as you wish and choose where to save it to.
Click to Save, than Export.
All done, now you have a PDF file of your design.
You can use lateral markers on the PDF viewer to navigate between pages in the design.
As you will notice, AE exports all the pages palette structure, as well as the Custom (Project) palette, as you can see in the markers for Components, Terminals and Wires.
📖INFO: This color export format is rather useful when you want to maintain the design’s visual information, such as wire color. However, it can be necessary to export a monochromatic version of your project, as some printers only do black and white.
💡TIP: To change the export format to a Monochrome one all you need to do is access the export dialog, go to Options button and in the Print style table, type in monochrome.ctb. (this is the only other setup besides default)
Now you can share the file as you wish with colleagues and partners.