Design elements spanning more than one artboard printing blank pages

[Handyann]

Hi all,

I know I'm being dim (nothing unusual there) because I've used my current setup to print these things perfectly ok before. Now, because I need the prints in 4 days and I'm elsewhere for 2 of those, I'm panicking slightly because the same setup is printing only what is actually in the individual artboard layers (like the registration symbols) and not the design elements. So, I'm basically getting blank pages.

I have the setup as per the screenshot, with the artboards at the top of the layers panel and the design layers below. 

I'm trying test prints of single artboards at the minute, so I don't waste paper.

Can anyone please give me a hint to get this project printed properly? I'm on Designer 2.4.1 and a Mac.

[thomaso]

AD doesn't work this way but requires all visual objects of one artboard as layers inside this artboard layer. Thus you might need multiple copies of the entire layout placed in the various artboards. (e.g. as instances of a Symbol which includes the entire layout)

Instead I would create a new, additional artboard in the size of all artboards and select + move all existing layers as child layers into this new artboard layer. Then export this new, single artboard … and in a second step use the print dialog options to tile the print as wanted. This also enables you to print scaled + add crop marks on every printed sheet if wanted.

Alternatively to tiling via print options you can use the Export Persona with a more cumbersome workflow: If you created the new main artboard mentioned above, create new, additional Rectangle objects with no fill or stroke and in size + position of each of the sub-artboards. Then use those Rectangles as Slices in the Export Persona.