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getting it to print 1:1 correctly


whakahere

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Hi everyone, I am new here. A quick introduction. I am a primary school teaching living in Germany. My experience with apps like this are only with maya (I have an 3D animation degree as well). I am totally new to autocad and currently have little knowledge how to use it.

 

I created a model in nurbs curves in maya as I know how to model in that program and then exported it to autocad. I did this as I want to print it out to scale. It was created in mm but I can't get it to print to scale (so 50 units = 50mm) any idea what i need to do?

 

I have induced the file that I am using. It is the two top plates to a DIY quadcopter. boys and their toys.

spiderauto.dwg

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Open the Plot Dialog box

Pick your Plotter/Printer

Pick your Paper size

Uncheck Fit to Paper

Make sure the scale is 1:1 so 1 mm = 1 unit

It may also be helpful to use "Window" under "What to Plot" to center your objects on the paper

Make sure to use the preview to verify before you plot.

 

Having said that, if you're going to plot from AutoCAD with any frequency, I would create a paperspace layout for your plotter/paper, and plot from there, rather than directly from modelspace, as you'll be able to preview your plot at scale as it will appear on the paper before even entering the plot dialog.

 

Plot.jpg

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Open the Plot Dialog box

Pick your Plotter/Printer

Pick your Paper size

Uncheck Fit to Paper

Make sure the scale is 1:1 so 1 mm = 1 unit

It may also be helpful to use "Window" under "What to Plot" to center your objects on the paper

Make sure to use the preview to verify before you plot.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35031[/ATTACH]

 

I have tried this but all I get is my object being very small in the bottom left corner. I tried changing the values around but couldn't get it right. I have used the dimension tools to measure areas that I know the distance off and they were correct. ( a square I have is 50 units).

 

I am unsure what you mean by - use "Window" under "What to Plot" to center your objects on the paper.

Screen shot 2012-05-29 at 11.36.02 PM.jpg

Screen shot 2012-05-29 at 11.36.19 PM.jpg

Screen shot 2012-05-29 at 11.35.51 PM.jpg

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Your viewport in the layout is not set to 1:1, you will need to make a much bigger viewport or stretch that one much larger and set the viewport scale to 1:1.

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I think you may have used an imperial template and not a metric template when you did your drawing because all I see in your scale list are imperial scales like 1/128"=1'-0" to 1'-0"=1'-0". I'm not seeing scales like 1:20, 1:50, 1:100, etc.

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Upon further review, I think that's an Imperial template, which is why the paper/viewport is so small compared to the model.

Edited by nestly
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I think you may have used an imperial template and not a metric template when you did your drawing because all I see in your scale list are imperial scales like 1/128"=1'-0" to 1'-0"=1'-0". I'm not seeing scales like 1:20, 1:50, 1:100, etc.

 

that is true. How do I go about fixing that?

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First you would have to open a new drawing using either one of the default metric templates that AutoCAD comes with or one that someone else created. Then you would have to copy/paste from the old drawing to the new and scale your objects accordingly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello everybody.

 

Hope you don't consider this necroposting. Just fished the post that relates to my prolem instead of creating a new post :)

 

I'm using Autocad 2011 on Xp OS.

 

So.. Basicly I'd like to print a circle that's 6cm in diameter and that I can go and measure it with a ruler by hand. This printing in 1:1 scale will be crutial in my projects, as I'm going to build what I plot.

 

I'm having kind of the same probleme as described by whakahere. As I try to preview the circle I'm going to print it comes on the bottom left corner very small, way out of scale. I have tried to meddle with the parameters described here but to no avail.

If an A4 page is 21 cm wide then a circle with 6cm of diameter should be a bit less than 1/3 of that with.

 

How can I get this right?

 

Thx

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this is what I did

 

file - new drawing

 

then open the SheetSets folder and select the files there with metric at the end.

 

the I selected my design from the other window and copy - pasted into the new sheet. checked that printing was on 1:1 and all was good.

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this is what I did

 

file - new drawing

 

then open the SheetSets folder and select the files there with metric at the end.

 

the I selected my design from the other window and copy - pasted into the new sheet. checked that printing was on 1:1 and all was good.

 

Thx.. that worked. But still I can't quite control what I'm doing, but for this part of the learning process is more than enough. I'll test the ability of my printer to print things to scale ;)

 

Thx again.

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