The print screen builds a PDF with everything you need to stitch: the key sheets (the thread legend) and the pattern grid cut into pages.
The simulation
What you see on screen is a faithful simulation of the PDF: the same pages, at the same size. With the sliders you choose the pattern zoom (the size of the grid in millimetres: bigger = easier to read and more pages) and you leaf through the pages before generating anything.
The options, one by one
Orientation
Portrait or landscape, with a nice touch: you choose it separately for the key sheets and for the pattern sheets. A wide pattern asks for landscape pages even if you want the keys in portrait.
- Portrait: The usual paper. It fits more height and handles better by the hoop.
- Landscape: For wide work: fewer pages and fewer cuts across the middle of the drawing.
Colour mode
How each cell of the pattern is printed. Three states that rotate with every tap, and the simulation shows you the result straight away.
- Symbols and colour: Every cell with its background colour and its symbol on top. The most complete and the easiest to follow.
- Symbols only: Black and white. The cheapest to print and the easiest to read in poor light.
- Colour only: No symbols, like a photo of the embroidery. Lovely for seeing the whole, awkward for telling similar shades apart.
Counts
Which figure the key sheet gives you next to each thread. Three ways of looking at the same thing: how much of that colour you are going to stitch.
- Stitches: The number of stitches in that colour. The exact count, to see which colours rule the piece.
- Length: The metres of thread that go into that colour. Useful if you buy thread by the metre.
- Skeins: How many skeins you need. The shop count: the one you take to the counter.
Right now the key sheet always comes out with the stitch count: metres and skeins are about to arrive, and the button is already in place waiting for them.
Symbol set
What the symbol list is filled with. Puntotek has letters and little drawings, and this button decides which ones it hands out first. Change it if two symbols in your pattern look alike once printed.
- Letters first: Starts with the alphabet. Comfortable if you are used to the classic charts.
- Drawings first: Starts with the graphic symbols. They tell each other apart better when there are many colours.
Symbol size
The size of the symbol inside its cell, in three steps. It does not change the pattern: it changes how much room each symbol has, and that shows a lot when printing at a small zoom.
- Full: The symbol fills the whole cell. The most legible if you print big.
- Medium: A little smaller. The balance for most patterns.
- Small: The symbol moves to a corner of the cell and lets the colour show. For tight grids.
Auto fit
What Puntotek does with the space left over on the last page of each strip. With auto fit on, it stretches the grid to make the most of the paper instead of leaving the margin blank.
- Not fitted: Every page with exactly the same grid, whatever paper is left over.
- Fitted: Makes the most of the page. Fewer sheets and less cutting, which is what you thank yourself for when taping the pattern together.
QR code
Every PDF carries a QR code in the top-right box of the first page. It is the only living part of a printed sheet: the paper is frozen for good, but you decide where that code leads. And if somebody reads it on screen it is a clickable link too. The button cycles through four destinations:
- Puntotek: to
puntotek.com. The one every pattern carries. - Your page: to your public profile,
puntotek.com/@youralias. Whoever gets the pattern finds the rest of your designs there. It needs you to have an alias. - This pattern: opens this very pattern in Puntotek. The most useful of the four: you print the big sheet to see the whole thing and use the phone to zoom into the tricky area, and whoever you hand a copy to opens it with the camera. It only appears if the work is published in the gallery.
- Your link: the “Own website” from your profile, the one you set in My account. Meant for anyone who shares or sells their patterns.
If a destination is missing its data —no alias, the work is not published, no website set—, the button skips it. It never stops on a position that does nothing.
Print the current page
Builds the PDF of just the page you are looking at in the simulation.
The complete PDF
Builds every key sheet and the whole pattern into a single PDF. With big patterns it takes a few seconds: the spinner tells you it is working. When it finishes it downloads (on iPhone and iPad the share dialog opens instead).
Close / Help
Two simple buttons: leave the print screen, or open this help page when you need a reminder of an option.
- Close: Goes back to the canvas without building the PDF.
- Open help: Opens the explanation of the current screen.
The key sheets
The legend shows each thread with its colour, its symbol, its reference and the stitch count, plus a thumbnail of the complete pattern.
Tips
- Before generating anything, leaf through the whole simulation. It is the same PDF, and odd page breaks show up there in time.
- If you are going to work on the paper (ticking off what is done), print in symbols only: it uses less ink and the pencil shows on top.
- Raise the pattern zoom before giving up on tiny symbols: it is almost always easier to stitch from a big pattern on more sheets than from a cramped one on few.
- Save the PDF as well as printing it. It is the copy you can print again without opening Puntotek, and the one you can send to whoever is helping you with the work.