We want to use Navision for creating/printing Product Labels on Zebra printers. At this moment we use a separate program for this. I know that there are Windows drivers for this printers. Is there a way to use Navision to create output on this printers? Anyone use this printers?
You have 2 choices, either: 1. Using standard Windows printer driver and designing the label-prints in the report designer in Navision - this works just fine. 2. Create the Zebra control files, which is documented in the Zebra docs. I prefer the 1st method as this is very easy to create and modify. And works just fine. /Soren
I assume that you mean Barcode if you say “Zebra”. The right method depends on two things: 1) are the Barcodes available as TrueType fonts and 2) Which Barcode-Type do you want to print? 1) Before you buy a printer you should make sure that you can print the Barcode you need within WinWord. This way you could use a WinWord-Template, use Automation to fill the Doc and use the functionality of WinWord to print the File. WinWord has a big advantage over Navision if you need a great number of identical labels: In Navision if you need 500 Labels, you would have to send the same Label 500 Times to the printer which slows down speed considerably. In Winword you would send the label once and set the NoCopies Parameter to 500. That’s of course much faster. 2) If you have a very simple Barcode like Code39 you are on the lucky side. This barcode is freely available as TrueType font. If you need Code 128 (most commonly used Barcode in Europe) you have a problem: Code 128 requires a check-sum and therefore a TrueType Font alone is not enough. You also need some software to calculate the check-sum. Besides, these Code128 Fonts are expensive. Two years ago, the cheapest one I found was around US$ 500. But that could have changed by now. This leaves you with a total of three methods to create Barcodes. 1) and 2) have been mentioned already by Soren, leaving 3) WinWord Automation About Method 2 i’d like to add that you need a Generic Printer driver to send the control file without any disturbing Escape-sequences. Method 1 should be the preferred one. Method 3 (WinWord) is suiteable if you need several labels and if the labels contain special features like rotated text or Bitmaps (look at the labels attached to packed meat in your local food-shop. Barcode rotated and BIO-symbol printed as Bitmap …) Marcus Fabian phone: +41 79 4397872 m.fabian@thenet.ch Edited by - fabian on 2001 Mar 09 01:41:39
Another solution migth be using a laser or matrix printer with barcode fonts integrated. The calculation of the checksum for the code used is done easily with NAVISION´s STRCHECKSUM function. Regards Uwe
The approach I like is to use one of the several high quality label design and printing programs that are available. You start by using the software to design your label. Then you can relatively easily create a seamless interface from within Navision to feed data to the printer driver routine that is part of the third party software. I have implemented this approach several times in different packages including Navision. The label design and printing software I like is Label Matrix from Strandware.
I have a customer that is using a zebra label printer, the Z4000. I used the Windows drivers for this printer and simply created a navision report to print to it. I have attached a zip file with the barcode fonts I used. They are 3of9. The Navision report creates barcode labels that they put on inventory and use barcode scanners to put them on orders, do physical inventory counts, etc… He has been using this with no problem for about 3 months now. James Reynolds System Engineer TAB US, Inc.
Dynamics NAV 2013 - Zebra Printer Update
We just completed a project for a client to print a Shipping Label from the Posted Shipment File. Once we got the hang of the ZPL format it got very easy. The key seems to be to use just one Text Box Property. Also, set the printer property to “Passthrough” Mode. The Label had 3 sections: ‘From’ was a lookup to the company information, ‘Order’ information from the Shipment Header Table, and “To” was from the Shipment Header Ship to Fields. It Prints on 4 X 3 Lables and looks great with the Mailing Bar Code too. If you would like a copy of our “How to” document, just send me an e-mail. Rick.Baxter at CostControlSoftware Dot Com. If it helps you, donations are always apreciated.