How to export a plan as PDF


Garden Planner doesn't have an export to PDF option in the file menu, however it is still quite easy to create a pdf version of your plan. You just need to "Print to PDF". Here's how:

On Windows 10

first open your plan in Garden Planner. Now from the Preview window clink on the Print button.

The Print dialog window will appear as shown below

In the Printer Name drop down choose Microsoft Print to PDF

When you click OK it will let you select a location to save the pdf file.

And that's it, you have created a pdf of your plan.

Tip: if you click on the Properties button you can set if the format of the pdf is portrait or landscape and also from the Advanced options button for Properties you can set the Paper size for the pdf.

On a Mac

First open your plan in Garden Planner. Now from the Preview window clink on the Print button.

First you will see the page set up dialog as shown below

Choose the settings you require and then click OK

You will see the following dialog

Look for the “PDF” button in the lower left corner, click on that pull-down menu, and select “Save as PDF”. You can now save your plan as a pdf

 

What about printing to PDF with a fixed scale.

It is possible to print to PDF with a custom scale

Here's how on Windows 10

To demonstrate how this works I will use one of the sample plans that comes with garden planner. First I open the plan.

Then click the preview window and click on the button Set Print Scale which will open the print scale window shown below

Uncheck the Scale plan to Fit Page option and then set a custom paper scale.

For this example I will set the scale to 1m in the plan equals 2cm on the page.

Given the size of this plan that will mean that on a portrait layout of an A4 page (or US Letter page) we will only see half the plan, but the whole plan will fit on a A2 page (or ANSI C in the US).

After clicking OK on the paper scale a message will appear on the preview window showing that a custom scale has been set.

If the plan is now printed (by choosing Microsoft print to PDF as shown above) you will end up with a pdf with only half the plan showing. But that is what we would expect as that is the scale that has been chosen.

 

Here the plan is viewed in the Adobe Acrobat reader. On windows 10 you can also view pdf's in the browser (MS Edge)

 


 

 

 

 

 

With the Microsoft print to PDF option you can also print to A3

From the print window pick properties and it will show the following window.

Click on Advanced and you will be able to select the paper size from the drop down.

If now print with this paper size you will get the following result

Now about 2/3 of the plan can be seen on the page - which is exactly what you would expect as the scale chosen was designed to fit on a A2 page.

 

But the Microsoft print to PDF option doesn't have a size bigger than A3.

If you wish to print to A2 you will need to use a different PDF printer (eg: Adobe Acrobat Pro)

 

Or you can just use the Microsoft XPS Document Writer which supports A2 and is free with windows.

The XPS (or OXPS) file format is Microsoft's equivalent to PDF and works in much the same way.

You can can choose XPS document writer as a Printer

and then click Properties and Advanced to get a much longer list of paper sizes.

 

If you choose A2 and now print you will end up with a plan that it scaled correctly filling the A2 page as expected.

It it is worth mentioning that there are a number of online tools that will convert from OXPS to PDF if you need to have it in the PDF format.