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Printing Boards

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The Boards tab of the print panel prints your stripboard, ready to hand out to your crew or save as a PDF. You can print a board as traditional strips, as an hour-by-hour Duration view, or as a calendar. This article explains each option in detail.

For an overview of the print panel, including how to open it, print to PDF and set the page size, see Printing Schedules.

Choosing What to Print

At the top of the Boards tab, choose:

The options below the View change depending on which view you choose.

Strips View

The Strips view prints your board as a traditional stripboard, one strip after another, using the layout from one of your designs.

Layout Design

Choose the design that controls how your strips are laid out, including which fields appear and how wide each column is. You must choose a design before you can print, and the Layout Design field is outlined in red until you do.

You can use a different design for printing than the one you use on screen. For example, you might print with a simpler design that fits better on paper. To create or change designs, see Designs Overview and Design a Strip.

Cover Page

A cover page adds a summary page to your printout. Choose “On first page” or “On last page”, or “None” to leave it out. The cover page shows:

  • The project name
  • Your header text
  • The total number of shooting days, and the start and wrap dates
  • A list of the cast with their ID numbers. Long lists continue onto extra pages.

When a cover page is turned on, a Hide Non Working option appears. Turn it on to leave cast members who don’t work on this board out of the cast list.

Cast ID numbers come from your elements. See Managing Elements to set them.

Page Breaks

Choose how your strips are split across pages:

  • Natural: Fill each page with as many strips as will fit, then continue on the next page. This uses the fewest pages.
  • At day break: Start a new page after every day break, so each shooting day begins at the top of a page. This is handy for handing out one day at a time.
  • No orphans: Fill pages naturally, but if a shooting day won’t fit on the rest of a page, move the whole day to the next page so its strips stay together

Page breaks depend on your day breaks. See Adding Day Breaks.

Choosing Which Strips to Print

  • Show All Days: Print the whole board. Turn this off to show the Day Range fields, then enter the first and last shooting day to print, such as 1 to 5.
  • Print Only Selected Strips: Print just the strips you’ve selected on the board. Select the strips before opening the print panel.

Colors

Control how each kind of strip is colored:

  • Banners: Normal (your palette’s colors), Force white, Force black, or Hide
  • Strips: Normal, or Force white to save ink or print in black and white
  • Day Breaks: Normal, Force white, Force black, or Hide

Hiding banners is useful when you’ve used them as notes for yourself rather than for the crew. See Creating Banners.

Use Tight Print Margins

Turn this on to reduce the page margins so more strips fit on each page.

Duration View

The Duration view prints each shooting day as a timeline, with each strip sized by how long it takes to shoot and labeled with its start time. Each day ends with a bar showing the shoot day, date, pages and total duration.

The Duration view has the Cover Page, Show All Days, Day Range, Banners, Strips and Day Breaks options described above. It doesn’t use a layout design.

Only strips with “Use duration” turned on are printed. To set up your durations, see Duration View.

Calendar View

The Calendar view prints your board as a calendar, with each day’s strips listed on its date.

  • Date Range: The first and last dates to print. Click “Reset dates” to go back to the board’s full date range.
  • Print Only Selected Strips: Print just the strips you’ve selected on the board
  • Show Days Off: Include the board’s weekly days off as columns in the calendar. Turn it off to print only the days of the week you shoot.
  • Show As Month: Print one full month per page, with the month name at the top. When this is on, the Date Range option is hidden.

Days off and holidays come from the board’s settings and calendar. See Managing Calendars.

Header, Page Numbers and Print Date

Every printed page includes:

  • Your header text at the top. Variables such as {board_name} or {scenario_revision_name} are filled in automatically. Click the info icon next to the header field to see them all, or see Using Variables.
  • Page numbers, such as “Page 2 of 6”
  • The date and time it was printed at the bottom, so everyone can tell which version they have

The Boards header is saved with your schedule and is separate from the Day Out of Days and Reports headers.

Printed boards are still the quickest way to share a schedule on set. With the right design and options, your crew gets exactly the information they need.

Boards, Designs, Printing
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