Scale Printing

[comradevini]

Hi, im new to AutoCAD and also to forums.

I taking old Tif Drawings and have got to put them into autocad 2007 just i dont know what size to print off the Tif drawing so i can measure them.

Any chance someone could tell me the printing sizes for diffrent scales?

[Tiger]

It all depends on the TIF-image really. Do you know what scale the TIF is in?

are you going to trace over the TIF to get a proper ACAD drawing of it? If so, then you don't need to print it off. Scale the TIF image to scale 1:1 and just draw over the image.

[comradevini]

i got tif drawings that have been scaned into the pc and the most common scales are 1:20 and 1:10 i think. If can want to print them off then use the scale ruler.

[Tiger]

ok, if you have the scale on the TIF then you can scale it up (command SCALE, scale factor 10 if the scale is 1:10, scale factor 20 if the scale is 1:20 and so on) to get it to 1:1. You should always draw in 1:1 scale in AutoCAD.

After you've done that you can Plot if off easily; from the Plot window, use Window to get just the TIF image and then select a scale to fit a suitable paper. uhm... shout if you want a more detailed description of how I'm thinking..or someone else will come along with another solution

[comradevini]

the drawing im trying to do atm is 1:10, the problem i have is i dont know what the original size of the drawing is so is there a way to print it off to scale from without knowing the original size or would i have to go out and measure what the drawing is from?

[Tiger]

do you have any dimension on the drawing? or a ruler or something on there? If so, you can scale the drawing from that.... otherwise I'd say your up the chocolate creek without a popsickle stick...

[comradevini]

the tif is quite bad quality but it looks like theres a normal 30cm ruler next to the drawing which is pritty much taking up the drawing, does that help at all?

[Tiger]

that helps!

Here's what I'd do step by step:

Start the SCALE command, select your TIF at the prompt Select Objects.
Specify the end of the ruler as the Basepoint. At the "Specify Scale factor or [Copy/reference]"-prompt, hit R for Reference. At "Specify Reference Lenght", pick the first end of the ruler again and then the other end of it. Then at the "Specify New lenght or [points]" prompt enter 300 (if you want it in millimeters - 30 if you want it in centimers).

That procedure will get your TIF to a 1:1 scale.

Then you can plot it to a desired scale - just don't tick "Fit to Paper" in the Plot dialogue and you should be fine

[comradevini]

ok thankyou so much m8

cheers.

[Alan Cullen]

Yeah it does. Use that ruler as the basis of your rescale of the TIF image.

Draw a line from the start point of that ruler, and run it along the alignment of that ruler to the 30cm mark of that ruler.

But first use DRAWORDER to get that tif image to the back of everything. Then change colour to magenta, so you can see what you are doing.

Now you have the line drawn from the start point of the tif image ruler. Draw a circle of radius 30 cm. Use the start point of that line as the centre of the circle.

Now use the command SCALE, and pick the start point of that line as the base point, then use Reference, pick the start point of the line, then the end point of the line, then the intersection point of the line and the circle.

The tif image should now be at scale.