File splitting with various page quantities

[JavierM-Xerox]

Note - Assuming that this question http://forum.support.xerox.com/t5/FreeFlow-Core/Output-file-splitting/m-p/198438#M1681

is the same as the one in this thread.

Not totally sure that I understand the workflow you are trying to enable.

The previous post you referenced talked about large files with tens or hundreds of thousands of pages.

In that case, you can setup Split (in FFC v5) to divide the file into segments that have a fixed number of pages. You can use the following option to split files into segments with a specific number of sheets

One thing to note - this is based on the number of pages in the PDF.

If the job has 600 pages then the above will split that PDF into 3 files (250, 250 and 100 pages).

The above should function whether you are splitting before of after imposition.

Based on your description, however, it seems that you may be thinking about offseting output stacks at the DFE.

Offsetting every N pages is ususally something that's defined in a DFE queue.

As such, you could setup a DFE queue to offset every 250 pages and another one to offset every 500 pages.

FFCore would then split covers and blocks off from each other, perform whatever imposition was needed and then use the routing in the print component to send jobs to the queue with the required offset. 

[Erick]

I have a related question. I would like to separate covers and text, adding a split node to separate each. Covers, I would like to split at every 250 "sheets", not pages, imposing them cut & stack on a 17x11 sheet size. "Page size" is 8.5x11. The text of the book, I would like to split at every 500 sheets. This helps bindery when cutting lifts. 

I thought that I could set up the imposition node before the split node, that way, the split would be at every 250 sheets, but doesn't seem to work? I can get the split to work nice "before" the imposition node, but then it splits at pages, not sheets. Is there a way I can split at sheets instead of pages?

I would also like to have the option to drop in different page quantities and have Core split correctly. Right now I have branches set up as, 1-250, another branch at 251-500 etc. Javier, In another email related to this subject, you said to set up the first branch of the split node at 1-2000 and the 2nd branch at 2001--1, thus pulling in all pages. You said to connect the 2nd branch back to the split node so as to take jobs at any length. My question is; how do you connect a branch back to it's own split node? I'm confused about this.

Erick