Question 1

How do I use the Sudoku Time-Saver

Accepted Answer

Welcome to the short tutorial on how to use the Time Saver Module for Puzzle Maker Pro - Sudoku.

Beware that this module only works as an add-on to the normal Sudokus, so you need to own at least one other sudoku module to actually use the time-saver.

Now, when you first see this module in the store, you may think to yourself "but why would I want that?". Well, the time-saver does exactly what it says on the box. It saves you time. A lot of time, if you know how to use it.

Normally, Puzzle Maker Pro generates one puzzle at a time. And no matter how easy it is to use, it still takes time to keep pressing that generate button and adjust your settings depending on how many puzzles you want of each difficulty. That's what the time-saver is for. It does that for you, so you can generate an entire puzzle book by simply pressing a button.

Well, you do have to set it up first. So let's get started with the Time Saver.

Getting Started

First off, let's find ourselves that Time Saver tab.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/PEaQMF9FRO/Getting%20started%20with%20the%20time%20saver.jpg (Getting started with the time saver (1).jpg)

After you click on the time-saver tab, you'll see the above screen. Let's quickly go through it.

First, there is the option to use the Time Saver to generate puzzles. if you want to use the Time Saver, you should have this selected.

Then, there's presets. Let's assume you have no presets set up. If it's your first time using Time Saver, you won't have any presets, and even if you have used it before, you may want something different.

Below that are the puzzle settings. This is where you'll be doing most of your work in the Time Saver module. And we'll go in-depth on how this works later.

To the right are the difficulty settings. What do those do? Well, if you want to call your difficulties something different, you can adjust that here. You can see that the level 1-7 are currently named what we call them, but if you want to change it to 1-7 stars, that's possible.

So let's get started.

Adding Puzzles to generate

First things first, in order for the Time Saver to generate puzzles, it needs to know what it needs to generate. So let's add some puzzles.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/yoC9U4BgVm/Time%20Saver%20puzzles%20added.jpg (Time Saver puzzles added)

So as you can see, I've added some puzzles. I've set the "Quantity" to 20, and selected some puzzles and variations.

Immediately you see in the table what it'll generate. Because I've set the Quantity to 20, it'll generate 20 of each difficulty level for each of the puzzles I selected.

An exception is made for the 4x4 sudokus, because those can only be generated up to difficulty level 3.

Now, that's a large amount of sudokus it's generating, and perhaps you don't quite want that. Or you want to fine-tune a bit more. So let's do that. Simply click on the square you want to change, and change the number.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/EwEY9l4RKB/Time%20Saver%20customised%20amounts.jpg (Time Saver customised amounts (1).jpg)

You can see that I've changed some settings now.

So in theory, this would be good enough to export, and a ton of puzzles would appear now.

But, we can do one more thing before we generate all of this.

See, on the bottom right is the "Show Layout Options" button. We haven't discussed this one yet.

So let's click that, and see what we can change.

Things are getting interesting now. If you click the "Edit Layout" button that now appears just above the table of puzzles, you can do something very fun.

You can set multiple puzzles to a singular page.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/VDUPnRhcEt/Time%20Saver%20Layout%20Setup.jpg (Time Saver Layout Setup)

As you can see, I've manually set the amount of puzzles that can go on one page to 12. 4 rows, 3 columns.

This won't work with all puzzles, and it won't look good with all puzzles. especially if you have the larger puzzles, such as the multidokus or the 25x25, you'd really want fewer sudokus on a page.

But if you have only 4x4 sudokus? Well, it would be a waste of space if you didn't add a few more sudokus to a page. If you add the Collate option, you can set up 2 layouts, one for the puzzles, and one for the solutions.

It's probably a better idea to keep those two the same for now. But if you've ever looked through puzzle books, you can see that the solutions in the back tend to have smaller solutions, so more fit on a page, and only the last few pages are solutions, instead of the latter half of the puzzle book.

You can also set up a new page for every time you move to a new section, so puzzles and solutions don't end up on the same page.

Well, with that being said, let's click "Create (TS)" in the bottom left, and have Puzzle Maker Pro generate all of this for us.

A small popup should appear showing it's done generating, and in your files you now find all of your puzzles.

How to use the Batch Function

The Batch function can be found on the bottom right of the screen.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/fMSvLDC8Y3/nonogram%20where%20is%20the%20batch%20button.jpg (nonogram where is the batch button)

Using the batch option has its pros and its cons.

On the upside, you can generate many puzzles in one go.

On the downside, you do not get to manually edit all your puzzles.

This allows for a faster workflow, but many puzzles that could be discarded.

Then why would you use the batch option? There are two things you can do with this. But first, let's check out the screen.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/IEi20shRxz/Nonogram%20batch%20screen.jpg (Nonogram batch screen)

The Source and Output Folders. You can select the folder where all your templates are, and the area where the program should drop all of the puzzle results.
The Puzzle Sizes. Very similar to what you've already seen in the normal screen, and we'll get back to this later.
The Source Files. After you've selected a Source Folder in step 1, you'll see a list of all the pictures in that Folder here. Right now we have a folder with a lot of fish images selected.

From here multiple options are possible. First, just below the Output Folder button, you see multiple options on where you want your hints to show up, what the separator is, zeroes and empty rows... If you're curious about what these buttons do, you can find the information in our Getting Started with Nonograms tutorial.

Now, first things first. Let's grab one picture, and select multiple Puzzle Sizes.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Pm1vJDGkZS/Batch%20option%201.jpg (Batch option 1)

Now, if we select "Go", the software will automatically generate all the puzzles we have selected.

As you can see, we haven't selected any options to remove white space, so a lot of empty rows appear in the puzzles.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/HIDyyzSzNH/A%20lot%20of%20fish.jpg (A lot of fish)

From this, we can select whichever puzzle(s) we like best, and keep those. Everything else we can discard, or choose to use later. However, as they're output as PNG files, we can no longer edit these puzzles.

There's a second option available too. We can select many puzzles, and only one size.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Yey09KroKQ/Batch%20option%202.jpg (Batch option 2)

Let's see what happens if we output with these settings.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/B9IZ007nqg/Many%20different%20fish.jpg (Many different fish)

A lot of 40x40 puzzles have been generated, one from each image in the Source Folder. Again, we can quickly select the puzzles that work, and discard the ones that don't. If you need many puzzles of the same size for a puzzle book, this is a quick and easy option to create them.

Finally, let's combine both options. Multiple puzzles, and multiple sizes.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/MC19pVBgTI/Even%20more%20fish.jpg (Even more fish)

You can see that all fish have different sizes where they work better, and if we discard everything else, we have the beginnings of a fish-themed nonogram puzzle book. Now all that's left is to combine them all into a book, for example by using our Easy Puzzle Books Powerpoint Plugin.

How do I use the Sudoku Time-Saver

How do I create multiple puzzles at once in Puzzle Maker Nonogram

Not many results?