Welcome to Monterey Barcode Creator, the powerful barcode image creation program. This quick tour is designed to introduce you to the power and flexibility of the Monterey Barcode Creator. Monterey Barcode Creator performs several key functions: creating, opening and printing barcodes. This short tour will show you each of these functions.
After completing this tour, you should be able to perform all the tasks necessary to manage your barcodes. The remainder of the manual is a reference for additional information about specific features.
In this tour we are going to make barcodes for our fictional
product - Poly Report Cover. We'd like to print the labels on a
2 X 7 Avery® label paper.
Each label contains a UPC-A barcode with the bar height at 1.0 inch,
13 mils in X dimension. On the top of the barcode, we'd like to place the
text Poly Report Cover TC-882. A completed label
will be the one like below:
 |
First, we are going to create a barcode. Start the
Monterey Barcode Creator by clicking |
|
| .
The program displays a default barcode with Morovia encoded as a
Code 39 barcode.
From the Symbology combo box in the Format toolbar, change the current symbology to UPC-A. The program displays the default UPC-A barcode.
From the Message combo box in the Standard toolbox,
type our sample number 03569012345, total 11 digits. You do not need
to enter the last checksum digit. If you do, the program
ignores it. Press or click the
button 
, which is on the right to the combo box.
The default barcode image does not have surrounding borders. To add the borders,
select solid line from the Border Style combo box located
on the Border toolbar, and set the border width to 3/4 pt.
The next step is to change the comment and place it on top. To do this, we need to open the Properties window. Select | or click on the button on the Standard toolbar.
Click on the Comment edit box, select all the text and press Delete.
Type Poly Report Cover\nTC-882. The characters \n
forces a line return at the middle of the text. Press Enter to
apply the change.
Click on the ShowComment edit box and
select True from the drop-down menu to show comment.
Click on the CommentOnTop box and select True
to place the comment on top of the barcode.
Click on the CommentFont line. A small button appears at the right of the box.
Click the button to pop up the Font dialog. Change the typeface to Arial Black,
set font style to regular and font size to 9 pt. If your computer does not have the
Arial Black typeface, use Arial instead.
Click to close the dialog box.
Click on the CommentAlignment box and select
mbxAlignCenter to place the comment in center.
Click on the BarHeight box and enter 1000. All length units in Barcode Creator are in mils (1/1000th inch); so 1000 translates to 1.0 inch, which is what we wanted.
You can also enter the bar height through the BarHeight combo box appearing on the
Standard toolbar. In the combo box you can use text form of the length, such as 1.0 inch.
Navigate to the NarrowBarWidth and enter 13.
As indicated above, 13 means 13 mils or 0.013 inch.
We want to leave enough spaces between the barcode and the borders.
This can be done by adjusting comment margin properties. Scroll down the
Properties window and locate four symbol margin properties:
CommentMarginTop, CommentMarginBottom,
CommentMarginLeft and CommentMarginRight.
Assign 100 to CommentMarginTop and CommentMarginBottom.
Assign 300 to CommentMarginLeft and CommentMarginRight.
All length units used in Barcode Creator are in mils (1/1000th inch). So 300 translates into
0.3 inch.
To save the file, press Ctrl-S or select from the menu. Type the file name you would like to use and click OK.
After we finished the barcode design, now we can print them out. Our goal is simple: print a full sheet of barcode labels on Avery 8463 label paper. To do this, we first load the label paper in our printer. If you do not have such a label paper, simply load the standard letter or A4 paper.
Select from the menu, or press the Print button on the Standard toolbar. The Print dialog pops up.
Check Use Label Settings box. The dialog expands
to display the label paper properties.
In the Label Products combo box, select
Avery Standard. In the Product Number
box, scroll all the way down and select 8463 - Shipping.
In the Print Range box, make sure that
Full Page of the Same Label option is selected.
You can have the program remember the label settings by clicking the button. Next time, the program loads the label settings automatically.
Click on the button to print a full sheet of barcode labels.
Started from version 3.3, Barcode Creator supports some advanced features such as batch printing. For more information, refer to Chapter 5, Printing Barcodes.
If you want to re-use the properties of this barcode file (such as comment text and margins), you can make the file as a template for your future new barcode files. After you make the file a template, all subsequent new barcodes copy the properties from this template file. If the template file is not present, the default barcode properties are used.
To make a file template, click on |
to pop up the Options dialog.
Click the button at the right of
Template File to Use box and navigate
to the barcode file we just created. Click twice to dismiss
the dialogs.
Now select from the menu. The new barcode copies all the properties from the template file.