Welcome to Maps Printer’s documentation!

Even though multiple pages and atlas options have improved print layouts usability and help enough to create many maps with few print layouts in a project, you can still have many print layouts in your project. And when comes the time to print or export them, it is not as fun as it could be. You indeed need to open each print layout, wait till it renders, fill the export options, wait till the export finishes to open the next layout. And so on...

If you find this process long and somehow boring (and even if you do not), then Maps Printer plugin is designed for you. It offers an easy, simple and quicker way to export print layouts to pdf or image (jpg, tif, png, bmp...) file format.

Installing

There are many ways to install a QGIS plugin

From QGIS Desktop

This is the easiest option.

click on Extension menu and choose “Manage and Install plugins...”

Do a research among all plugins with expression like maps, print, layouts, composers ...

Select Maps Printer in the filtered results and click on Install button.

From QGIS plugins repository

Maps Printer is available in the QGIS official plugins repository.

Select the version you wish to install according to your QGIS version and click on Download.

Unzip the file and copy/paste MapsPrinter subfolder into your user plugin folder (\.qgis2\python\plugins\).

From Maps Printer’s repository

Maps Printer’s code source is available on Github.

Among the existing Releases, select the version you wish to install according to your QGIS version and download the corresponding archive.

Unzip the file, rename the subfolder to MapsPrinter and copy/paste it into your user plugin folder (\.qgis2\python\plugins\).

Using Maps Printer plugin

Installing Maps Printer plugin provides a sub-menu in Extension menu that contains an entry to launch the plugin and another one to reach this documentation. An icon is also added to the plugin’s toolbar. Once you have created and set at your convenience your print layouts and wish to export some of them, just click on Maps Printer icon. The following dialog is opened.

_images/interface.png

Exporting layouts

Maps Printer’s main aim is to make easier the export of print layouts to pdf, svg or image (jpg, jpeg, tif, png, ico...) file format. Launching Maps Printer opens a dialog with a frame listing all available print layouts. An Update button is available to keep up to date this list when print layouts are newly created or deleted.

To export your layouts :

  1. Check the print layouts you wish to (either one by one or by doing a multiple selection, right click > Check)
  2. Choose a folder for the exported files
  3. Select a file format
  4. and click on “Export” button.

Show or hide print layouts

If you want to make changes in some of your print layouts, you no longer need to open them one by one. Selecting them and right clicking opens a context menu from which the “Show” option will open all these print layouts. Hiding many layouts at once is alsopossible with the “Close” command.

Tips & Tricks

If a print layout is atlas enabled, this will generate an atlas while exporting, according to the options set. If you just want to export the map, you should disable atlas generation before.

The “Update” button helps to add to the list new print layouts that may have been created since the dialog is open. It also erases those that may have been deleted or renamed.

Pugin developped by Harrissou Sant-anna (CAUE 49)