I tried printing only the pages in VC4 by unselecting all other options and choosing to print only the contents.
Steps followed:
Files → Print Project → Checked All Pages (Visualization file) and unchecked all other logical view contents
Unchecked all configs (Configuration view files)
Unchecked all configs (Physical view files)
Checked only Print Contents.
However, the generated PDF included a first page with a blank logical view, followed by pages containing the key mapping file after each page.
I also tried unchecking all options in the general print settings, but that didn’t help. Then I checked the files in File Explorer, and they were in .pages format, which I’m not familiar with.
Is there any way to print or save only the VC4 pages without the key mapping files in between—either directly in Automation Studio or by converting the .pages format?
HI @Vimal_Raj , what is the status of your question, I think @Niwal has provided you the description how to do that. If is it not solved, please tell us what AS version and VC4 version do you have. Maybe some printscreeen that will help us to understand what procedure you have followed.
I appreciate your suggestion and gave that approach a try. Since there are quite a few pages, I found it a bit time‑consuming. Taking screenshots feels quicker than printing each page individually. I was wondering if AS has any other options that could make this process easier.
I spent some time now diving deeper into it, there are two ways of printing from AS one is the way you are using and the other one is what I tried.
The printing function you are using is the general AS print that can print anything from Automation Studio but the problem that you are facing is the fact that the keys are technically part of the page so they will be printed every time.
The other print function is the File → Print (instead of Print project) which is VC4 print that basically prints what is open in VC4 but the restriction is it only prints exactly what is up at the time you call it.
Either of these really isn’t good for you but from what I can find there is not really any other good way except using a workaround like you said of manually taking pictures.
Personally I would probably write a script for it but that is a bit out of the scope for community support we provide here
You can automate the screenshot process from Automation Studio if you take the screenshots from a live HMI (including ARSim) using the VCSrsht library. It’s not exactly the same thing as printing out a development view, but it would give you just the screens. The only thing to keep in mind is that the screenshots will show the screens as they are displayed, meaning if you have any elements hidden (i.e., due to a user not being logged in) those will remain hidden unless you manually toggle them from code.
just as a side note:
if your use-case is about creating user documentation for machine operation, in past we used a Automation Runtime function for creating (automatically) screenshots from the running visualization.
For VC4, there’s a library VCScrsht that can create a screenshot of the displayed page into a file on the PLC file system (should also be usable in AR simulation).
So it is possible (by implementing a bit of source code) to step through the pages, create screenshots (the screenshots are BMPs as I remember), and use those “real-life” screenshots later for documentation.
But as I said, it’s just a side-note, because not in every use-case it makes sense to program something to create picture, I’m aware of that
And as if there were not enough replies already, I’d just do the print-out as you do and in Adobe Reader I’d go to print and selectively print the pages without the key-pages using a print-to-pdf printer
(Ofc this is not a solution but a workaround - but it lets you work with what you already have
Since this is a one-time process, I prefer not to invest additional time in the solutions mentioned above. Nevertheless, those suggestions would be highly valuable if I were implementing them across multiple projects.
For now, I’ll proceed with taking screenshots. Thank you all for your valuable input.
