New mag+ Designd Production Tool Features – Mag+ Designd Support

The Mag+ Designd Production Tool is a cross-platform application that takes your layouts (called Verticals) created in Adobe InDesign with the Mag+ Designd Plugin and packages them together into a MIB (Mag+ Issue Bundle) file that is uploaded to your Mag+ Publish portal. This article will walk you through how to set up and use the Mag+ Production Tool and it's new features.

Installation

Installation of Production Tool will still work the same as it always has and be a part of the Plugin installer. Once installed, the new software icon will look like this:

Defining your InDesign directory

One of the new features in the Production Tool is creating a new project. Before you create a new project you will need to set your InDesign path in the Production Tool Preferences window and then clicking the “Choose Location” button to navigate to the Adobe InDesign application installed on your computer.

Tip: If you are using a Mac you can open the Preferences window with the 
shortcut key CMD + , (Command and comma).

Select the version of InDesign you are using for production then Save and Close the preferences window. Once this is set you are ready to create a new project.

Note: For Mac users on El Capitan the message in the application selection dialog box will not display as it does in the image below.  Just know that 
you are selecting your actual InDesign Application.

Error Notice: If you do not set your InDesign application path you will 
receive the following error when attempting to create your project

Creating a New Project

A project is a folder structure automatically created for your app content available for the devices of your choice.

From the Production Tool File menu select New Project. A dialog window will display asking where to put your project, select a directory on your computer and click Open.

Tip: If you are using a Mac you can create a new Project with the 
shortcut key CMD + N (Command and N).

Another dialog window will display to select the devices you want included in your project, as well as assigning your Issue ID, Brand name, MIB version and the number of verticals to include in your issue.

For information on what devices types to create and their compatibility with specific devices please refer to our Device and Issue Compatibility article.

Note: When defining the number of verticals be sure to create the amount ofverticals your project will contain.  If you are unsure of how many at 
this point we recommend creating more than anticipated so that they will
all share relative Issue IDs and Brand naming conventions, otherwise you 
will need to manually adjust these when adding new verticals to an existing
project.

Error Notice: If there is an active dialogue window open in InDesign while attempting to create your project or verticals the following error message will appear.  Just close this dialog from InDeign and try again.

Once a project is created, you will see the output in your project location similar to this:

Your project file extension will be .magproj and in your project location you chose you will see a folder created for each device type you selected along with a blank InDesign file (Vertical) for the amount of Verticals you chose. Once these files have been created you are ready to begin design your Verticals!

Open a Project

There are 3 different ways you can open your existing project:

Use the “Open Project” option from the File menu and select the .magproj file
Double click the .magproj file from your project folder
From the Issue Settings section in the right column of the Production Tool select your project from the "Project" dropdown menu

Tip: If you are using a Mac you can open an existing Project with the 
shortcut key CMD + O (Command and O).

Remove a Project

Projects can be removed from the Issue Settings section in the right column of the Production Tool by clicking the delete/trash icon to display the "Issue Manager" window and then selecting the desired projects from the list and clicking "Remove Selected Issues".

Creating a New Vertical

If you have already created your project and selected the number of verticals then your verticals have already been created within your project directory.

If you need to add a new vertical you can do so from the Production Tool File menu by selecting "New Vertical"

Note: If you have already generated your InDesign verticals files from the 
"New Project" option and need to add more verticals to the same project
using the "New Vertical" option you may need to manually open your
InDesign files and adjust the ID to match the formatting of your
already generated vertical's naming convention.  Again, we recommend
generating more verticals than you think you will need to avoid having
to do this manually.

Tip: If you are using a Mac you can create a new Vertical with the 
shortcut key SHIFT + CMD + N (Shift, Command and N).

You can also create a new vertical from the Mag+ menu, please refer to our Creating a New Mag+ Vertical Document Using the Mag+ Menu article.

Creating MIB files

Creating your MIB files works the same as it always has but if you are new to the Production Tool please refer to our Mag+ Production Tool Options article for more details on it's features and how to export your MIB files.