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How do you ensure an attached PDF is at the right scale?


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Hi Toberino,

 

This is all starting to make sense now ... THANKS!! and just to answer your question I am a beginer, I have only being working on CAD for a couple of months, I dont have anyone in my office who does it as I work alone. I am an irrigation engineer and I have started to learn CAD as I am doing more design and consulting, I have been getting a CAD operator to do it for me till now.

 

the scale I am trying to achieve is 1:500. so using a scale ruler 1cm on the printed page will equal to 5m on the ground. Reading what you have said here I am correct in assuming that: as my drawing in 1:1 in model space, my units to scale are in meters then the scale I set in my view port should be 1/1000xp? As one unit in model space equals 1000mm on the ground??? However this is not working as regardless of the scale I set be it 1/5000xp or 1/1xp and any and everything in between the content of that viewport shrinks down to what ever the factor of that scale determines, at 1/1 the drawing decreases in size by about 36%. I havent printed it yet but I will do so first thing in the morning to see what scale it prints out at.

 

just to clarify and to see if I have understood correctly, if I what to print a drawing and I want the scale to be 1:100 do I set the scale in the view port as 1/100xp?

 

Sorry if this is doing your head in.

 

Thanks again for your help.

 

What are your units set to?

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Alright, after some intense studyin' and research I think I have the answer. Assuming your units are set to mm, then your scale factor should be 1/5xp. So yes, if you wanted 1:100 then that would be the scale factor, 1/100xp. I think the metric system is a lot simpler than I was allowing it to be.

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other than going through the advanced option I dont see any other way of attaching my drawing

 

Yep, that is how it's done. Is that how you tried the first time? Oh well if you can't get it. Did you try 1/5xp? I know for a fact it is either 1/5xp, 1/50xp, or 1/500xp. But, without the drawing I don't know which one it will be. From what I have read millimeters are your base unit, like our inches. Then meter would be the next one, like our feet. So with your units set to millimeters, and you wanting the scale to be 1cm=5m, then since there are 100 cm in a meter, we would divide by 500. That is 1/500xp.

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Yep that is how I understood it. Unfortunately my drawing doesnt want to play the game and stick to the rules. When I put the scale into the drawing (just to confirm I am doing it right is this it.... z enter 1/500xp enter ...done?) if this is it then the problem continues as the drawing shrinks to a very small size ... even if I go outside the logical selections i.ei I try 1/1 the drawing will shrink by about 35%. I have the page set up at A1 size and when I do a print view my drawing is too small on the page. I still think the issue lies with when I inserted the PDF and had to scale it to get it to the right size where when I measured on the drawin it is correct. this is what is affecting the scaling in the view point. I will look at this again and see what I can work out.

 

thanks again

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Yep that is how I understood it. Unfortunately my drawing doesnt want to play the game and stick to the rules. When I put the scale into the drawing (just to confirm I am doing it right is this it.... z enter 1/500xp enter ...done?) if this is it then the problem continues as the drawing shrinks to a very small size ... even if I go outside the logical selections i.ei I try 1/1 the drawing will shrink by about 35%. I have the page set up at A1 size and when I do a print view my drawing is too small on the page. I still think the issue lies with when I inserted the PDF and had to scale it to get it to the right size where when I measured on the drawin it is correct. this is what is affecting the scaling in the view point. I will look at this again and see what I can work out.

 

thanks again

 

hmm..very strange. There has to be something that is not we have not connected on. Have you tried starting from scratch? Open a new drawing, set your units, setup your layout, import the PDF (uncheck all of the options and drop it on 0,0 without any scale), scale the PDF, zoom to the scale in your veiwport. That should be all you need to do. Scaling your PDF should not affect the scaling in your viewport in any way. Unless your are rescaling the PDF through your viewport which is not correct. Once your viewport is active you can basically draw in your modelspace through the viewport. Or in this case rescale the PDF. Thats not what you are doing is it?

 

Just as a test and to give you a chance to play with how the scaling works, do this. Double click in your viewport to activate it. Then type "z"1/5xp. Then type "z"1/50xp. Then type"z"1/500xp. Watch what each one does. Repeat them in any order and you can even try different ones. This will give you the feel of scaling your viewport. You can pan around to center the drawing to the part that you want to show up in your viewport. Don't zoom in or out though or it will change your scale. Let me know how that all goes

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hmm..very strange. There has to be something that is not we have not connected on. Have you tried starting from scratch? Open a new drawing, set your units, setup your layout, import the PDF (uncheck all of the options and drop it on 0,0 without any scale), scale the PDF, zoom to the scale in your veiwport. That should be all you need to do. Scaling your PDF should not affect the scaling in your viewport in any way. Unless your are rescaling the PDF through your viewport which is not correct. Once your viewport is active you can basically draw in your modelspace through the viewport. Or in this case rescale the PDF. Thats not what you are doing is it?

 

All the steps I did were in model space..... The steps of what I did are as follows:

open new drawing, set units to metres, set layout, import PDF with all options unchecked, measured a known on the drawing which in this case is a driveway which measures on the drawing 0.0122011 units. to scale the PDf to the right size I multiply it by a factor of 491.758 as 0.0122011 goes into 6 (the width of my drive in metres) 491.758 times. I then check on the drawing what the width of my drive is and it measures 6 units ... result. I then go into layout 1 where my pdf is but a meer spec in the bottom left corner double click into the viewport to activate it and follow you instruction, the only way the pdf fit the page is if it is 1/1 and then once that is set it shows the scale to be 0.489524. If I start all over again and set my units to mm then the result is a bit better but still not 100%.

 

I will have another go at it and see what I can figure out, I will also print it today and let you know how that goes.

 

Thanks so much for your patience and help.

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Toberino,

 

I printed the drawing which is slightly out, it is a little bit smaller than the original pdf. Looking at this now and how I printed it I think I am understanding the "problem" a bit better.

 

the original pdf was set up as A1 and the scale 1:500 which in real terms is 1mm on paper = 1000mm on the ground. in order to get the pdf to a size where ther units in model space equate to what the measure on the ground will be the pdf required some scale factoring to be done. The pdf no longer matched the dimentions of an A1 page. ie 841mm x 594mm or .841m x .594m. if these dimentions were used the pdf did not match the required size. so we now have a pdf where the units measured in model space match on the ground. so when I look through the view port in layout 1 and click on view extents the pdf in centred and made to fit as best as possible within the viewport (as this may not be exaclty to the maximum limits it would account for the slight difference in size when printed) so when printed it is almost the same size.

 

So what has happened? I think that although in model space the scale is 1/1, because I factored the scale to make the pdf fit this factor remains there and alters all other scales ( not sure if I am explianing in a way that makes sense) it is like a filter that the settings pass through. What do you think ?? make sense or is this nonsense.

 

Also did a little experiment, I opened two drawings one where the units are mm and one where the units are metres. I drew a line in both one 100m long one 100000mm long so effectively both 10 m long. I cut and paste each line from the one drawing into the other and what a surprise they are not the same length just as I thaught. What is the point of being able to select units of measure if a unit in model space in a unit not a measure. If i draw in mm only then does the drawing match that of on the ground. inches and feet will not measure up either. ????

 

alternatively I havent done it properly and just adding to my confusion.

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I think I have it. We've all been stuck in model space. The problem is in paper space. What you are describing sounds like you have your "Plot scale" in your "Page Setup" set to something quite large. It should be 1:1.

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Hi RobDraw,

 

If I go into paper, select the viewport and check out its properties then it tells me that my annotation scale is 1:1, standard scale is custom and custom scale is 1.88. if I then go into my plot page setup then the scale is 1:1.

 

I think the custom scale is factoring into the stadnard scale and adjusting the drawing size even though the scale is showing 1:1. what do you think ??

 

its like if you photo copy something and reduce the size by 50% then photocopy the reduced copy by 50% to actually get 25% of the original. Make sense?? not a good analogy but all I could muster at short notice.....

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