Print Files

You can schedule tasks to print individual files or all files of a specified type within a folder.

You can specify one or more files or folders, but you cannot specify both files and folders in the same task.

Creating a Print Files Task

To create a Print Files task:

  1. Click Print Files on the sidebar, or click Tasks > Print Files.
  2. In the dialog box, type a new title for the task or leave the default in Task title.
  3. Select the files or folders you want to print:
    • To select files:
      1. Under Task files or folders, click Add File.
      2. Select the types of files to print in Files of type.
      3. Browse to the file to print, then click Open.
      4. Repeat steps a, b, and c to select additional files.
    • To select folders:
      1. Under Task files or folders, click Add Folder.
      2. Browse to the folder that contains the files to print, then click OK.
      3. Under File Name or Type, click in the row that contains the folder you just added, then select the types of files to print.
      4. Repeat steps a, b, and c to select additional folders.
      5. If you do not want to include subfolders, clear Include subfolders.
    To delete a file or folder from the list, click its number in the leftmost column, then click Delete.
  4. To specify print options, click Options.
  5. Set the print Task schedule.
  6. Optionally, click Advanced to change task options.
  7. Click Finish.

Scheduling the Task

To schedule the task:

  1. Under Task Schedule, set:
    Option Description
    Running mode Specifies how often the task runs. Select Once, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.
    Start time  
    Start date  
  2. Click Options to change printer options or page setup.
  3. Click Advanced if you want to change task options such as backup file location and time-out duration.
  4. Click Finish.
    The task and its title, scheduled time, scheduled date, and status appear in the Tasks panel. The status of the task is Scheduled.
    To run a scheduled task, your computer and printer must be on at the scheduled start time. The SOLIDWORKS Task Scheduler window does not need to be open. If your computer is off at the scheduled start time, the task runs when you turn your computer on.

    At the scheduled start time, the task is initiated. If the task acts on more than one file, a sub-task is generated for each file. If you selected Backup task files in Task Options, a backup copy of each file is saved to a .zip file. Then each file is printed. When the task completes, the status changes to Completed.

    If your backup files include Unicode file paths, use a zip file extraction application that supports UTF-8 encoding.

Setting Print Options

When you schedule batch printing of files with Task Scheduler, you can choose from many of the same settings that are available when you print directly from the SOLIDWORKS software. You can also choose to use a document's saved printer settings for each print task.

When you select printer-specific settings in the Print dialog box, the same settings are used for all files in the print job.

You can also choose to use a document's saved printer settings for each print task.

To save printer settings with a document for use with batch printing:

  1. In SOLIDWORKS, create the document.
  2. Click File > Print.
  3. Select settings in the Print dialog box and click OK.
  4. After printing, save the document.

To set print options:

  1. After you identify the files to print and schedule the printing task, click Options to change printer options or page setup.
  2. In the Print dialog box, to print using print settings that have already been saved with the documents you are printing, under Document Printer, select Use document printer settings.
    Documents that do not have saved settings use the settings that you specify in the following steps.
  3. Specify the print range.
  4. Select print options such as the Number of copies, Print background, whether to Convert draft quality drawing view to high quaility, and so forth.
    Your options match those available when printing from within SOLIDWORKS.
  5. Click Page Setup to access all SOLIDWORKS page setup options with the exception of print preview.
    1. Set the scale and resolution.
    2. Specify the Drawing Color.
    3. Set the paper size, orientation, and source.
  6. Click OK twice.