Nesting helps you quickly arrange a group of designs onto a Layout Window in an economical fashion, and printing them. The first thing you should do is add the Nest shortcut to the toolbar of the Layout Window.
Document size
Before you nest a group of designs, you should determine the size at which each design prints. This is determined by the value set in the Size settings.
- Go to Layout Menu > Size and click on the New Colourways tab.
- If you want your files to print at full scale, tick ‘Create new colourways at document size’. If you are printing samples, you may prefer to leave this option unticked, and enter a specific size in the Width and Height fields instead.
This simply determines the size at which the objects are added to the page in the Layout Window. Once the objects are on the page, you could select each individually and set a unique size to that object if required.
Nesting
- Go to File Menu > New Layout Window to open an independent Layout Window.
- Set the page width by going to File Menu > Page Setup, and set the page to the maximum width of your media. At the moment the height of the page is irrelevant because AVA will automatically work this out after the nesting is complete.
Note: If your page width is too narrow for at least one of your designs to fit into, the Nesting feature will not work.
- Once the page dimensions are correct, go to the Finder Window and highlight the files you want to print.
- Drag these files onto the Layout Window directly from the Finder. The files will embed into the Layout Window, and will be automatically minimised into your Dock, keeping your working space clutter free.
- Activate all the newly embedded files by going to Edit Menu > Select All, or by using the shortcut ⌘ A.
Press the Nest icon in the toolbar.
Choose the spacing you want between each object.
Choose whether to ‘Allow object rotation’ and click OK. AVA will automatically work out how your designs will best fit into the width of your media, using the options selected in Steps 7 and 8.
Use the Set Page feature to fit the page to the objects.
Associated objects
The use of Palettes and Dynamic Text should be avoided when using the nesting feature. Only design files will nest.