4 replies to this topic

[Raphael Saldanha]

Hi!

I`m planning a printed topographic map with shaded relief of a big region, in 1:50.000. Printed, this map will be with 2523x2523 milimeters, or something around nine A0. Someone has some tips for printing large maps, and for joining the stripes?

Thanks!

Raphael Saldanha

[mika]

It should be possible (???) to find someone with a plotter capable of printing something like that. The largest map I printed was 1500 x 2500 so I won't give my head for that. In general, the limitation is a plotter width (ok, a width of the printable area). Length doesn't play a role as machines of that sort are usually fed from a drum. If you don't find anything that big, go for smaller, but print the map in as few bits as possible, so you can avoid joining too many stripes. You should easily find someone who'll print it in two stripes.
And regarding the joining procedure… Be patient and accurate. It should do just fine :-)

Dom

[Matthew Hampton]

If you found someone with a 36" plotter - you could do it in three strips - but depending on the complexity of the file you also might need to send it through a pretty robust RIP (unless the plotter has loads of memory). I have had the best luck working on a map at .5x size then doubling the size through Acrobat or through the RIP interface (we use Onyx software).

When I have joined plotter sheets together for larger maps I usually leave about a 7mm overlap. After finding a large area to lay them out, I trim one sheet to the edge of the printable area, line them up and use wide (matte) transparent tape. It's rather unsophisticated but it has worked out well.

[Raphael Saldanha]

Hi!

I was really thinking about using stripes. But what is the best direction for slice? Horizontal or vertical?

[erik]

I've had huge maps striped both ways, and I think getting the overlapping edges to be on the shortest axis of your document makes the biggest difference in preventing the worst alignment problems. Mis-alignment seems to be cumulative, so a 1mm gap in 1 foot of output can really add up by the time you get to 30 feet wide. Alignment problems can make this kind of project look very bad very quickly.

Most printing devices seem to not be able to keep output perfectly aligned along an edge. I don't know why that is, but I've noticed this across many many tilings I've done by hand using many different printers and some very large printouts that printers did. If you can get a printer to absolutely guarantee that the content of your strips will align within 1mm, then you could consider other factors as more important.

If your document is much much wider than higher, and most viewers will be looking at it in the range of 4-7 feet off the ground across the entire map, another argument can be made that keeping the viewing zone free of tiling joints is important because each tiling joint can be jarring and make labels harder to read.

In any case it is good to analyze where the tiling joints will occur compared to your important labels that would be split by the tile. Of course you can also move labels to avoid the split, and I recommend doing that.

erik