The concept
It was mentioned on another forum about making Tarps available, that may not be in the range of the current commercially available, like "Roger Smiths Tarps"
The request was aimed at those that have some skills in desktop publishing, assuming that a graphics or visio type software would be able to reproduce the image and print to a pdf, for distribution to the masses.
I considered that it would involve some work for that individual to create each design as a one off and would require similar effort to produce a second design and so on.
It struck me (being that Excel is my strongpoint) that this could not only be created in a spread sheet just as easily, but could also be programmed to create all the variables that could be specified and automatically update size, proportions, colour, shape, font, etc ,etc by simply typing in instructions
This means that one Excel spreadsheet could be made, that any individual could use to make any variety of different tarps at will.
Having the skills and a website that it could be downloaded from and a need for some special "Lumsdonia" sheets, it seemed obvious that I would have to have a go!
The design
Initial population of repeating text was easy. Then a bit of research was needed to learn how to programmatically change the variables with VBA. Most were straight forward and the basic shape and manipulation were done. The biggest problem was to make the 'North' (top) bunch of text to be "upside down". There are sites that can do it as a one off, but I needed it entirely in the spreadsheet. There is no way to do it Excel and no font available either. More by fluke than anything else, as my research on google basically said it was not possible, I remembered a clever trick I had used before (a long time ago when making xmas place cards for the dinner table) and managed to get it to work.
The Basic version
The program now works, it is only basic, but can alter all dimensions, text content, font type, font size and overall colour.
Excel is quite querky when it comes to printing and as such is not good at printing to real scale dimensions, it's designed more easily to fit to a page by scaling. Plotters are equiped with scale correction so that acurate plots can be made at 1:1, but printers usually don't have that feature. This means that although I have set up the spread sheet to be configured in millimeters, the actual print tends not to come out at the same size.
To compensate for this issue and the fact that every printer has different attributes, I have put in a width and height factor in,so that if prints are measured, the error in size can be adjusted by tweaking the factors.
The Result
So obviously it works..... and having printed a few off, duly scrunched and fitted, they look remarkably good! (far better than I had hoped for)
I obviously have a good printer, because even the black (although a bit soggy) has full coverage with no lines like you used to get on printers years ago.
Conclusion
The VB is a little unstable, so I have decided not to release the excel file, its probably beyond most to manipulate it anyway, so I am simply creating tarps as pdf's and releasing those to my website. Its a small range at the momment and still needs a lot of development, as I have little info to go on and the the correct sizes and fonts are unknown.
Please please give me feedback, if like them, think they are rubbish or just plain wrong (in which case let me know why so I can fix them.
Lumsdonia pdf download shop page
Or am I just wasting my time?
Does anyone want them/find use?