Define margins for plotting in Virtuoso

Hi all!.

Finally I have managed to directly plot schematics and layouts in
Virtuoso to a domestic laser printer with the following .cdsplotinit
settings:

HP_LaserJet_1020 | HP LaserJet 1020:\
:spool=lpr -P HP_LaserJet_1020: \
:manufacturer=Adobe: \
:type=postscript1: \
:resolution#600: \
:maximumPages#1: \
aperSize="A4" 4960 7016: \

However, the aforementioned measures for A4 paper always result in
plots a little off-paper, and for each schematic I always have to
manually tweak the "Scale" parameter in the Virtuoso plot dialog
windows in order to make them fit the A4 sheet. Is there any way of
defining margins (in the .cdsplotinit or wherever) in order to avoid
the off-paper plotting and at the same time benefiting from the
scaling that Virtuoso calculates automatically (i.e., without having
to touch the "Scale" parameter each time)?

I tried by just changing the paper size in the .cdsplotinit but this
doesn't solve the problem, the plots still come off-paper (at least on
the Y-axis) and one has to play with the "Offset" values to bring the
plots in-paper. Likewise, the "Center Plot" option seems to only
center the design on the X-axis, resulting in off-paper plotting on
the Y-axis anyways.

....Any ideas on how to overcome this? Thanks once again for your time
and help!

Regards,

Jorge.

 

Hi Jorge,

The paperSize field can have 4 numbers instead of the two you've specified. If
you specify 4 numbers, the first two are X and Y offsets. So if you put
60 60 4960 7016, you'd get a tenth of an inch offset (you'd need to ensure that
the scale numbers are reduced a bit to allow for the smaller central area.
So for A4, it would be something like:

60 60 4864 6895

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Thanks so much for your help Andrew! You were right, .cdsplotinit
allows to define X and Y-axis offsets. I however discovered that the
right order for the paperSize arguments are as follows:

aperSize="[paper_size_name]" x-size y-size (x-offset y-offset)

By trial and error, I found the following values suitable for printing
on A4 sheets on the HP LaserJet 1020 (allowing aprox. 7mm margins on
each side):

aperSize="A4_with_margins" 7410 6766 150 150

Once again thanks for your support!

Regards,

Jorge.