How To: Smartworks MFP5 Software Setup
Today we’re going to be talking about how to set up SmartWorks MFP5 for your TX and TM series MFP printers.
Setting up the Printer in the Software
To start with, we will open SmartWorks MFP5. When you first open the software, you will notice that it says the T36 scanner with no media—there is nothing inserted in it—but on the bottom right it says NO PRINTER. So what we’re going to do is set the printer up in the software. To do that, hit PRINTER SETUP, and you will see your machine—the printer that is installed on your computer. We click it. Hit OKAY. It will search for the printer.
Now it’s showing that the Canon TM-305 is online. Once that is completed, I always go through setting up a couple of presets as well as changing the default SCAN TO file location. To start with, we’re going to through setting up the SCAN TO file location and then the presets.
Setting up Scan-To File Location
To set the SCAN TO file location, we’ll select this little gear icon, SETTINGS. From SETTINGS, we’re going to go to PROGRAM PREFERENCES. You will notice, on the bottom, you have two little circles. If we click the second one, it brings us to the second page. Here is the DEFAULT SCAN folder. I always change the DEFAULT SCAN folder to wherever I want the scans to go, so that way, if something happens with the presets, the default is changed in the software and the scans will still go to the folder that you want them to. You can do this locally, so you can have it to a folder on the computer itself. Or you can go through your network, and if you have a drive mapped or if you know the location, you can go through it that way.
The UNITS I always change. They come defaulted as a millimeter. Here in America, we like inches and feet instead of millimeters and centimeters. You just click it, and it switches to inches.
Go back to the first page again. Just a little overview of what we’re looking at here. The HOME SCREEN FUNCTIONS DISPLAYED: COPY mode, SCAN mode, COPY AND ARCHIVE, PRINT, EDIT, and HELP. Typically, when I set these up, EDIT, I turn off. PRINT, I turn off. And COPY AND ARCHIVE, I turn off. That way, the only options you will have on the Home screen are the COPY function and the SCAN function. And I also leave the HELP function on. If the end-user needs some assistance, they can click that and it will give them a bit more in-depth detail about what they need to do.
From there we’re going to hit the HOME button. Now you can see I only have those four icons. I have SCAN, COPY, HELP, and SETTINGS.
Making Custom Presets
To make custom presets, you start by selecting SETTINGS, and then PRESETS, and then SCAN. Here’s a list of all the default presets that come with SmartWorks MFP5. I like to simplify this list and make it easier for the end-user. Most of our customers what we see do technical drawings and documents, so they don’t really need COLOR GRAPHICS or GRAY GRAPHICS. COLOR LINES and GRAY LINES are just fine for what they do. If your customer is a higher-end graphic art type customer, you may want to leave COLOR GRAPHICS on.
The case for our customers, I start by selecting COLOR LINES and then select COPY. I rename this COLOR PDF. I do the same for GRAY LINES. Select it. Hit COPY. And again I rename this GRAY PDF and hit OKAY. Once I have those two selected I will choose either GRAY or COLOR PDF as the default preset that opens when the software opens.
Then I go through all the factory presets and turn them off. To turn them off, make sure it’s highlighted in this light blue. Click where it says ON/OFF, and it will turn off. I do that for all of them, even the COLOR LINES and the GRAY LINES since we already have those copied and new ones made. The B&W CLEAN, B&W DIRTY, B&W VERY DIRTY, and BLUEPRINT, I leave those on. The reason for that is BLACK AND WHITE CLEAN would be just the regular black and white drawing. BLACK AND WHITE DIRTY would be if the drawing is a little bit older and it has a bit of speckling in the background but not much, they would use BLACK AND WHITE DIRTY. Or BLACK AND WHITE VERY DIRTY would be if it’s really old drawing with a lot of speckling in the background, then they would use that setting. However, I always warn customers that, when you are doing the speckle removal if you will, always start at DIRTY, scan it in, and make sure your fine small text is still there. If it is but you still have some speckling in the background, then go to the VERY DIRTY setting and scan it again. But it’s very important that the end-user always make sure that any fine text or small lines are still there because the smaller the text, the finer the lines, the software may incorporate that into being speckling and ignore it in the scan. It’s always good practice just to start at DIRTY, make sure everything is there. And if you’re not happy with the result, then go to very dirty. But again, verify that everything is there.
Setting up Scan Presets
Now that I’ve made the presets, just hit the HOME button again. And we will go to scan. Now under our scan presets, we click that. Here’s a list of the presets. The top two are the ones we just made, followed by the CLEAN, DIRTY, VERY DIRTY, and BLUEPRINT.
When the end-user is going to be scanning, what they would do is start by selecting our preset. In this case, we’re just going to start by saying it’s a gray PDF. They put their document in, image facing up. Right now, my scanner just went offline because I’m not using it. But when they put the document in, it’s very important that it says, down here, the width of their media. If it’s a 36-inch document, they want to see 36-inches down here. Same thing with 30, 24-inch, 22-inch, 17, whatever size the media is, you want to make sure it says it down here.
Accounting for Different Media Sizes
If it does not say that, use the down arrow on the scanner, back the document back out to you, and reinsert it. For anything other than 36-inch wide media, I haven’t seen any issues. But, with the 36-inch wide media, when you put it in, sometimes I have seen it give you some fake or erroneous numbers. You want to make sure that it says the proper size down here.
Once it says the proper size, this button over here will illuminate green. You’ll hit it. It will scan your document in, and it’s going to show you on the screen what you scanned in. If you’re happy with it, hit the green button to save it. If you’re not happy with it, on the top right, there will be a little HOME icon. You just click that. It will discard it. Then you can rescan your document.
Well, that does it for another short How-To video. If you have a comment or any concerns, leave a comment.