Matthew Machinist Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Hi, My name is Matthew, I am an apprentice Machinist, as part of my apprenticeship I got a 3 day crash course in autocad, now my boss wants me drawing stuff for our turners. I have one slight problem, when I was at my autocad course the teacher gave us a complicated procedure to plot something. Now that I am at work it doesn't work at all, for starters he was plotting to a printer they had set up at the school. My employer wants me to plot to pdf so they can print it "upstairs". So I drew a drawing and then opened up the template he wanted me to plot it in and pasted it in there, it was way to big for the template, so I figured I would scale the drawing to make it fit - heres my problem, when I scaled it the hours I had spend dimensioning got scaled as well. So I'm really not sure how to solve this one, is there a way to scale without scaling measurements? Or is there a way to alter the template before I start? I'm really not sure and the two huge autocad reference books I bought before posting this question are no help - I guess this question is too basic for them. Thanks, Matthew. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MSasu Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 To solve quickly your issue you may scale the sheet outline instead to fit the sketch at the required scale. For next drawings you should look on Paper Space usage. For PDF printing I will recomend you CutePDF tool. Regards, Mircea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadgad Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 It sounds like the template in which you did your drawing is not the same scale as the Sheet which your boss gave you. That or else something was inserted in an inappropriate scale. Look up drawing units in one of those giant books, and template selection in the other. There are a number of ways to screw this up. You should start with a template which is of an appropriate measurement system, meaning either Metric or Imperial. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReMark Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 How about you post a copy of this drawing and provide us with any plot related information you think is important (ex. - scale) and someone here will take a look at it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiger Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Welcome to the forum I just want to point out that you should never scale the actual model of what you draw. Always draw it in 1:1 scale in Model Space and then either scale up the border in your template to fit around your drawing or look into useing Paper Space and Viewports to put a scale on your drawing before you print it. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SLW210 Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Besides the recommended CutePDF I also use PrimoPDF both are Free, both are quit nice and will work well with AutoCAD. Always draw full scale and adjust the border size or set border to fit to paper size in paper space and use a viewport to view and scale the model space in the paper space border. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pablo Ferral Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Here is a good tutorial on plotting with AutoCAD that you might find helpful: http://www.we-r-here.com/cad/tutorials/level_2/2-8.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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