DomuS3D Composer is an external application included with DomuS3D that can load a project’s details (also called atoms: layout, walls, technical details for the installer, renderings, …), allowing you to arrange your own printouts, summary documents, and brochures by customizing them in paper space, with no boundaries regarding layout or paper size (A0, A1, … A5, letter, …).
Furthermore, Composer offers extended customized commands (for instance shot peening, text disposition, etc…).
When selecting the “Print with Composer” command (available in the Tools->Print section of the Ribbon), DomuS3D allows you to save a package containing all the information needed for the print; this package refers to the project at the moment when the command is launched. The package for Composer has .d3p extension.
Once the package is opened in Composer, this is what appears:
In the Components window (in the left column, just like in DomuS3D) you'll visualize the different atoms available for the project.
You can select an atom and drag and drop it onto the paper. Resize and align it however you want. Do the same process for the other atoms and create the desired print format.
Following the Windows™ standard for spreadsheets, on the bottom of the screen there is a sheet selector to work on; in any moment you can create other sheets for the same document (following the first).
In the next images you can see some layout examples made in DomuS3D Composer.
In the following image, you can see that the tools that are available in the Insert tab of the main Ribbon:
Rectangle, Line, Polyline, Circle, Ellipses, Arc: are CAD tools that allow you to draw these shapes with any size.
Simple Text and RTF Text: allow you to insert a rectangle containing a free text, even with several lines. The text can be aligned in the middle of the paragraph, the left or the right. You can use the toolbar to move the text on the sheet, and the Delete button to get rid of the selected Text. RTF Text is different than simple text in that it is compatible to be exported to different platforms or print.
Note: allows you to insert a Note related to one of the elements on paper. This relation consists of a line that starts from the point to highlight and finishes next to the text area.
As you can see in the image on the left, there are two kinds of text alignment: above or under the reference line. The image below, indeed, shows how to set up the line terminator.
Default Title Block: lets you insert a default title block onto your page (in technical drawings, the title block is generally a rectangle at the bottom of the page that contains project information such as client name, project name, scale, etc...)
Walls list: allows you to insert the exploded view of the room's walls, as you can see in the following image. Should one of the walls be irrelevant you can delete it by simply clicking on the button.
Tiles list: allows you to insert a table that contains a list of tiles used.
There are three possible lists available:
- Tiles available in the current room
- Tiles available in the whole project
- Tiles contained in the selected atom
This last option is available when you select the floor atom, or a covered surface atom. The table containing the tiles list can be reduced as to organize the cells in more lines/columns, as you can see in the images on the left.
Disclaimer: allows you to insert a text control containing the Company disclaimer (can be set in the Options window, in the Print section)
Images: allows you to import a JPG and/or PNG image (could be, for instance, a previously done rendering, or an image from your client of the space to create a before and after)
Estimate: Starting in the 2022 version, in the Home tab of the Ribbon, the new "Estimate” button allows you to insert a table with the materials and the material quantities used in your project.
When inserting, it is possible to select the information that you want to visualize in the table and, if desired, it is possible to save this configuration for subsequent projects by clicking “Remember this choice”.
It is then possible to insert the table starting from the current page (if there is sufficient space), or in a new page after the current one.
The table that is created will occupy the entire width of the page.
After the table is inserted on the page, it is possible to edit the values of certain fields (e.g. Q.ty, Num. boxes, Sale price, Net amount) by double clicking within the cell. The table behaves like a spreadsheet and automatically updates with each change made.
ORGANISE and ALIGNMENT
The Alignment and Organise sections let you easily alight atoms or modify the order in which they are visualized.
OTHER FEATURES
Automatic update of project modified in DomuS3D
The new version of Composer allows you to automatically apply updates to a project created previously, taking into consideration the subsequent changes made to the project in DomuS3D and updating the contents of your composer brochure accordingly.
To apply updates, after having modified a project in DomuS3D, it is necessary to generate a new .d3p file from DomuS3D with the updated version of the project by using the “Composer Printout” button in the Tools tab of the Ribbon.
Then, open the .d3p project previously created and saved in Composer, before any of the subsequent changes were made, and select the “Update Project” command from the main drop-down menu. The command will ask you to select the latest print file generated after the changes were made in DomuS3D (the one cited in the previous paragraph).
In the window on the left that houses all the elements that can be inserted into your brochure, the elements that are recognized as having been modified will appear with red text.
The substitution of the elements already present in your brochure with their respective updated versions will occur automatically. The table with material and quantity estimates, if present in your brochure, will also update automatically. If manual edits had previously been made to the editable values of this table, they are left unchanged; an exclamation point will appear in these fields indicating that they have not been updated and should be double checked by the user. By clicking on the "!" icon, a window opens that indicates that the field has been modified and reports what its updated value would be if there hadn’t been a manual edit.
Print Templates
With the new version of Composer, it is possible to save a print template based on a previous project as to have it available to quickly use again for future projects.
Print templates are organized in a library, separated by whether they were created by Maticad or by the user, and it is possible to visualize their preview.
Custom Title Blocks
Custom title blocks are organized in a library, with the possibility to visualize their preview.
Image Quality in Print
It is possible to convert the format of the elements loaded into your brochure into images: this allows you to have a higher quality when printing as a PDF. This choice is available in the Options window.
If you activate this option after having inserted an image into your project, it should be deleted and inserted again so that the change can be applied.
This article is valid for the 2022 version and later.