Overview
Printing truss tapes involves importing information from Vectorworks with special a Truss Tape symbol. The general overview is to place the Truss Tape symbol in the center of your truss position, rotated to match the angle of the truss, and enter the Position Name, Truss Length, and Labels for the ends of the truss.

Use the Vectorworks Plugin to push to Paperwork.show and Truss Tapes will be created based on the symbols and positions in your Project. You can view the summaries then print the truss tapes from the Truss Tape Worksheet

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Vectorworks Symbol

The symbol is used to mark the center of the truss, the rotation of the truss, and get the position, length, and end labels.
Feel free to use any symbol you like, but it must be a standard symbol (not a lighting device), named "TrussTapePWS", with a "pws truss tape" record attached with a "Position", "Truss Length", "Side A Label", and "Side B Label" field.


The position and rotation of the symbol are used to determine the offsets for printing, so it's important to place the symbol in the center of your truss position with the correct rotation.


The Side Labels are arbitrary, you can enter whatever you like and they'll be placed and the ends of you truss tape.

Which fixtures and cables are shown on the truss tape is based on the "Position" field of the symbol, which must match the Position name of the fixture.

Length determines the real world length of the truss tape. Fixture are drawn from the center/symbol out, so if a fixture or cable falls outside of the length of the truss it won't be printed.


The "upstage/downstage" cord placement is respected to a degree - if the object is on centerline, then the truss tape symbol will be drawn on the centerline of the truss.
If the object is drawn more than a couple inches above or below the centerline, than the truss tape symbol will be drawn above or below the centerline to match.
No matter how far the symbol is away, the truss tape symbol will drawn on the paper. Accidently including a fixture from another position by not properly setting the Vectorworks position field is a common issue

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Importing
Once the truss tape symbols are placed, they're imported the same was as any other fixture with Vectorworks plugin Send command(as long as they're visible)

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Printing

The Truss Tape Worksheet has a list of all Truss Tapes you've imported into your Project. Click the Print link to open a new windows with your Truss Tape ready to be printed.
There is currently no way to edit this information, that feature will be included later.


You must let Paperwork.show open a pop-up window to preceed, most browsers will block popups by default but give you an option to allow for that particular website.

There is a scale adjustment setting on the worksheet to fix errors with the length of the truss tape. In our testing, the receipt printer we used printed a tape shorter by about a half inch for every 5ft, so we adjusted the scale to 1.015 (1.5% bigger) to compensate.
Your results may vary, so use the scale adjustment accordingly. Unfortunately, printing from a webpage is not an exact thing, and with something as large as a truss tape will compound the errors quickly.

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Epson TM-T20III Setup
The Epson TM-T20 series is the standard receipt printer for printing truss tapes. This isn't the only receipt printer that will work, it's just the most common and this system was specifically tested with the TM-T20III
Currently, tape width is a set value at ~3 inches. In the future this will be adjustable but currently you should use 3 1/8" receipt paper

Setting up the printer can be annoying and tedius, so below is a brief summary on the steps required. Feel free to reach out on the forum for support

You'll need to install the "Advanced Printer Driver" from Epson's website, as well as the setup utility "TM-T20III Utility" (Not strictly neccessary but makes certain changes easier)

Install the printer and the utility, then open the windows Printers control panel, select the Receipt Printer, and click the "Printing Preferences" option


Go to the "Feed and Cut" tab and make sure cutting is only enabled for "End of Document"


Next, go to the "Advanced Settings" tab and click the "Advanced Settings" button


Check the margins are set to zero, then go to the "User Defined Paper" section and add a new type of paper, set to the width of the receipt paper and one foot in length


Close the printer options and open the "TM-T20III Utiliy" program. Disable the paper reduction in the "Paper Reduction" area
NOTE - Printing with this utility open tends to corrupt the print, close this program before trying to print!


And look a the "Printing Control" section to optimize your print. The settings we've tested are below, a rediced "Print Speed" helps a little with accuracy and "Print Density" can be played with for print quality.

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Browser Settings
After hitting print on the pop-up truss tape printer window, you'll see the standard print dialog for your browser. Below are instructions using the Firefox browser.

Select the receipt printer from your list of printer, and select the following options:
Portrait
Paper Size: The custom papersize you created earlier, "Truss Tape" in the example
Scale: 100%
Margins: None
Disable "Print Headers and Footers" and "Print Backgrounds"

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