FlexMail offers a number of features you can use to align and position objects on your design:
Postal guides will help you to design mail pieces that conform to the postal specifications in a specific country.
Printer guides assist you in designing a layout that will be accepted by the printer. Printer guides also offer features to optimize the layout for printing speed.
Gridlines help you to position or align objects - such as text boxes, barcodes, graphics and AutoShapes - more precisely.
TIP: If you have any specific design requirements, e.g. that you need to position objects very exact on a pre-printed form, you can also load a scanned form as a background. For more information see Backgrounds.
The postal guides display a postal template that indicates the preferred position of the different elements of a mail piece. The postal guide that is displayed depends on the country that you have selected for your project and the size of the item. Based on these two settings, the program will show one or more templates from which you have to select the one that you want to apply to your design.
The active locale is displayed in the FlexMail status bar at the bottom of the window. To change the country, double-click the icon showing the globe or flag at the right-hand side of the status bar.
TIP: If the locale that FlexMail has selected is not the one you usually want to use, you can set the default locale in the FlexMail options window. To do so, click the File tab and then Options from the menu that appears and again Options on the right hand side. In the window, select Datasheet and select the default country.
To show or hide a postal guide:
On the Designer tab, in de Grid & Guides group, click Postal Guides.
From the list with Postal guides, select the one you want to use for the mailing.
You can set a number of display options for your Postal guides. To modify the display options, click the Launch button located at the botton-right corner of the Grid & Guides group. With the Postal Guides tab selected make the choices you want:
Show tooltips. With this option selected, the program will show a tooltip with descriptive text for the area where your mouse pointer is located.
Show area description. With this option selected the area description will be displayed as part of the template.
Outline only. Areas will only be indicated by border lines. Areas will not be grayed or have any other background pattern.
NOTE: Displaying Postal guides and Printer guides is mutually exclusive. When you switch Postal guides on, Printer guides will be switched off.
You can display Printer guides that assist you in designing a layout that will be accepted by the printer. Printer guides will also help you in optimizing the layout for best possible print quality and printing speed. Printer guides will:
Display the non-printable margins of the printer as a grayed area on the page. The size of the non-printable margin depends on the capabilities of the printer and the paper size and orientation you have selected. For fixed head printers, the program will display the height of the print unit(s).
For some printers, FlexMail is capable of displaying guidelines that reflect the head movements of the printer necessary to print the envelope on shuttle head printers. For fixed head printers, the program will show the unit heights and, when a unit exists of multiple print heads or cartridges, the height of each head.
To show or hide Printer guides:
On the Designer tab, in de Grid & Guides group, click Printer Guides.
NOTE: Displaying Printer guides and Postal guides is mutually exclusive. When you switch Printer guides on, Postal guides will be switched off.
The grid is a network of evenly-spaced lines that helps you to position or align objects - such as text boxes, barcodes, graphics and AutoShapes - more precisely.
By default, gridlines are not visible, but you can display gridlines to view the drawing grid on the screen. The default spacing of gridlines is 0.25 cm if you are working in metric units or 1/16 inch if your units of measurement are inches, but you can change both the vertical and horizontal spacing between gridlines. Initially, the grid begins at the upper-left corner of the page - the 0 point on the horizontal ruler - but you can change the starting point also.
To show or hide gridlines:
On the Designer tab, in de Grid & Guides group, click View Gridlines.
You can set a number of options for the Grid. To modify these options, click the Launch button located at the botton-right corner of the Grid & Guides group. With the Grid tab selected make the choices you want.
Show grid. Use this option to switch drawing of the grid on or off.
Snap to grid. When this feature is turned on, FlexMail will pull an object into alignment with the nearest intersection of gridlines as you drag or draw an object.
TIP: To temporarily override the snap-to options, hold down ALT while you drag the shape or object.
Spacing. In the Horizontal Spacing and Vertical Spacing boxes, enter the spacing you want.
Origin. Specify where you want vertical and horizontal gridlines to begin, relative to the edges of the page.
Printer. If you want to align the grid to the capabilities of the printer, check the Link grid to printer box.
When you check this option, the Spacing and Origin boxes will be disabled and you can only select a Fine, Normal, or Coarse grid spacing. The actual spacing depends on the height of the print heads of the printer you are using.
NOTE: This option will only be available when you are using FlexMail with one of the FlexMail printer drivers.