Printing Graphics to a 8.5 X 11

[AcousticBruce]

My program....

There is a blank white page of a 8.5 X 11 paper with a 3X4 grid on it.
There is a user area to create grids on the right side. SO basically 2 JPanels EAST and WEST.

When the user clicks the "ADD" button it adds the current grid to one of the 3X4 units.

There is a print button - when u click print it prints basically what you see on the left side minus a few grid lines and indention.

**** MY QUESTION *****

Since the left side is just a preview it is also scalable to the user. Which means if I copy that Graphics object from the preview to the Printable print method. It is hard to scale it right for print.

So I figure I would make one central reference graphic object and copy from that. The problem is I cannot use a Graphic object that hasnt actualyl been painted on screen. How can I do this?


here is reduced SSCCE version of code showing when I remove (comment out) the mainGraphic the scaled preview on the right doesnt show anymore.

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.print.*;

public class TransferGraphics {

	JFrame frame = new JFrame();
	JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel();
        MainGraphic mainGraphic = new MainGraphic();
	PrintPreview printPreview = new PrintPreview();

    TransferGraphics() {

    	mainGraphic.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(850, 750));
    	printPreview.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(400, 640));

    	//mainPanel.add(mainGraphic, BorderLayout.WEST); 
    	mainPanel.add(printPreview, BorderLayout.EAST);[COLOR="Red"]How can I display this without displaying mainGraphic first?[/COLOR]
        mainPanel.setBackground(Color.darkGray);
    	frame.add(mainPanel);
    	frame.setSize(1280, 760);
    	frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    	frame.setVisible(true);

    }

	public class MainGraphic extends JPanel {

		public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {

			g.setColor(Color.WHITE);
			g.fillRect(0, 0, 850, 1100);

			g.setColor(Color.RED);
			g.fillRect(0, 0, 50, 50);
			g.fillRect(55, 0, 50, 50);
			g.fillRect(0, 55, 50, 50);
			g.fillRect(55, 55, 50, 50);

			g.setColor(Color.BLACK);
			g.fillRect(800, 0, 50, 50);
			g.setColor(Color.BLUE);
			g.fillRect(800, 1050, 50, 50);
			g.setColor(Color.GREEN);
			g.fillRect(0, 1050, 50, 50);

		}
	}

	public class PrintPreview extends JPanel {

		public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {

			Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
			g2.scale(.4, .4);

			mainGraphic.print(g);

		}
	}

	// MAIN METHOD
    public static void main(String[] args) {
    	TransferGraphics tg = new TransferGraphics();
    }
}