Caliber Tip: Exporting Traceability Diagrams to a PDF or image file

The traceability diagram feature in Caliber RM is pretty nifty. Rather than viewing traceability relationships in the traceability matrix, it allows you to see those relationships mapped out diagrammatically. One of the problems with the traceability matrix is that it can be printed, but there is no native functionality in Caliber that allows you to save the diagram as an image. This can be problematic if you want to show the diagram to anyone who doesn’t use Caliber. Well, not to fear! There are actually two ways to save a view of the traceability diagram so that you can distribute it to stakeholders who do not use Caliber.

The first method does not require any additional software, but will only save an image of the diagram and none of the metadata:

1. Open Caliber RM and create a traceability diagram
2. Adjust the view of the traceability diagram to your liking.
3. Create a screen capture of the active window by clicking Alt + Print Screen.
4. Open Microsoft Paint
5. Paste either by clicking Ctrl + V, or through the “Edit” menu

You’ve now pasted the diagram into paint and can save the diagram as a .jpg , .bmp, or .gif. This works pretty well, but I much prefer the following method–exporting the diagram to a .pdf:

For this method, you need a good Print-to-PDF utility. I really like pdf995, because it also allows you to convert your Microsoft Word 2007 documents to pdfs, which comes in handy in all sorts of situations. Once you’ve installed your utility, do the following:

1. Open Caliber RM and create a traceability diagram
2. Adjust the view of the traceability diagram
3. Choose, “Print” from the “File” menu in the traceability diagram window.
4. In the Printer drop-down, choose “PDF995” or whatever utility you have installed.
5. Do NOT check the “Print to File” box.
6. Click “OK”.
7. You will be prompted for a location to save the file to as well as what you would like to name the file. Name your file and Click “Save”

That’s it! I prefer the .pdf method because, although it is not as easily modified as a .jpg or .gif, it displays a nice header and some metadata information about the diagram.