OK, totally new and working my way through this. I made a series of symbols that I saved as .png, then imported them, arranged them to the window. I had a hard time setting the grid to what the actual sizes of my components are. According to the grid, they were tens of feet long. I think I just played around with the document properties, and by zooming in. Can't remember, I'm dizzy. This is a drawing of a blank electronic chassis, where I can print out the blank, and then add components by hand drawing them in. I then pressed something which put a box around all my symbols, and I couldn't undo it. Meaning i couldn't re-arrange the symbols in a little tighter. The problem is when I print the page, the outside edges are cut off. I just need to know the proper procedure for setting up what I'm doing to the grid, and that it all prints OK.

Another thing, I saved the drawing as a .png, and when I printed, the background was all black. I need it white. I couldn't find where to set a default background colour.

Hi.

New cairo interprets transparent as transparent black -previously it was transparent white- that results in png-s that some viewers display with a solid black background as far as I know.
To overcome the problem remove the transparency -either put a fully opaque white filled rectangle in the background or set the white background's alpha channel in the document's properties (Shift+Ctrl+D) to 255.

But in general avoid saving as png -that is not vector, you lose the scale factor and the possibility of high detail.
Check this page for further details.


Cannot help much on the original problem though without knowing more about the file.

Did you maybe group your objects? Groups are used to organize a drawing, and to use a common filter/transparency/transformation for a group of objects. Check by selecting and looking at the status line at the bottom. To ungroup, right-click and ungroup or press Ctrl+U.

Or maybe you made a bitmap copy by pressing Alt + B. Then just delete the object that is on top of the original objects (if you haven't accidentally deleted them before). Also, check by taking a look at the status line to see if it's all a single 'image' now.

The printing problem is most probably a known bug with Inkscape 0.91, Windows 64bit version.
Here's a list of workarounds:

- exporting to PNG, then printing that image from another program
- putting a white rectangle at the bottom of your drawing, which is at least as big as your drawing
- eliminating all transparencies in your drawing (no blur, no opacity < 100%, no alpha < 100%)
- using Inkscape 0.91 32bit version (on Windows)

Also see the release notes for the current Inkscape version:
http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php ... notes/0.91

I think all my symbols got "boxed" after I pressed the "Resize page to drawing or selection" button on the page tab of Document Properties. If I can undo the "box" around my drawing, I can reposition the symbols a little closer together, then hit aforementioned button, and then it should print OK. I should mention that before I pressed the Resize to page button, the print resulted in a zoomed in version of my drawing.

When highlighting the box, I get the arrows on all sides and corners, so I can move the box around, but my symbols stay where they are. Is there a way to resize everything a little bit smaller?

Ungrouping had no effect.

And what does it say in the status line when you select the object?

Within the bordered area, I have 19 .png files which I imported. I must click on one of the .png images to highlight the border. When doing so, the status line says: "Image 999 x 831 embedded in root. Click selection to toggle scale/rotation handles."

When moving the handles to decrease width and height, the image resizes, but the original size stays as a layer underneath. In effect I am seeing 2 images, making it unusable. The same thing happens when manually entering the width and height pixel size in the tools control bar.

Or, if I can un-embed the image, and then manually reposition my .png files, that would work as well.

If I can decrease the area of the drawing, I'm sure it will print/display properly.

You probably have duplicated your images or made a bitmap copy of them. Just delete the huge image to get to the small images underneath. (Save first, and use undo if it doesn't work as expected).

Thanks Moini, somehow I did make a duplicate. I deleted that, and now I was able to move the individual .png's. Printed, and voila!