Page setup - how?

Question

I just downloaded yEd, and it looks great!
But I am confused about the page setup.
I want to make a UML diagram, that spans over 3 A4 pages. That is, when exported as PDF, I want to print it out over 3 pages.

But how do I set up each page?
How can I add a new page? I only see "New document", not new page.
How can I tell if my diagram will fit nicely on each page, so that labels are still readable?
I see no "page frame" in my diagram, - just a void white space. So I have no idea whether my elements are inside the page or outside the page frames.

Am I missing something here? Please point me in the right direction!

Best regards
Ingvar

Answer 1

yEd diagrams are not page oriented (in the same way images in Paint/Photoshop/the Gimp are not page oriented) and therefore pagination support is very limited.

If you are using a PDF printer, you can use "File" -> "Print Preview"  with poster columns (see the preview's "Settings" dialog).

For direct PDF export, you could use an appropriate custom size combined with A4 page settings (tab "PDF") and tiling (tab "Tiling") - at least in theory. You would have to calculate the appropriate size yourself which requires that you know how to use DPI to convert from screen size to paper measurements (and vice versa).

Comments

But how can I spread a diagram out on several pages, then?

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You do not do so at all in yEd (except for the print preview approach explained above). Export as a single PDF page (by having "Automatic Page Settings" on the "PDF" tab enabled), then have your PDF viewer do the pagination. (Usually this can be handled in the viewer's print settings.)

That said, if you use default settings for PDF export except for non-automatic page settings and tiling enabled, yEd will spread your diagram over several pages as it deems appropriate.

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I create each page with a different file name, usually with a suffix like p1, p2, p3 etc. I then print each page as a PDF and combine the pages in Foxit PhantomPDF. To be able to create each page directly in yEd would be easier and is a feature I would appreciate.