Printing to Scale

[chris_stuart_leach]

I work for a demolition company and and trying to print off site plans, sent to us by clients (which are drawn in CAD, but sent to us as pdf's), to scale on an A1 printer.

 

The documents being sent to us are supposedly to scale @A1.

 

I have tried printing both in adobe and bluebeam but both programmes seem to lose accuracy and consistency between drawings.

 

What is the easiest and cheapest way of measuring, then printing pdfs to an accurate scale.

[Tiger]

You have the PDFs? And are printing them to a ordinary plotter on paper?

 

Do you have anything on the PDF that is dimensioned already? Use that as a reference when printing and compare.

 

I would guess that it is a thing with your plotter. I know that the ordinary plotters that I use are set as default to Auto-scale to printable area, usually something like 96%. Find the scaling options in your plotter-dialog box.

[Dipali]

foloow what tiger says if u need to print. nut if you are looking for alternate where without printing you can measure drawings, & client is not wiling to provide cad file than ask them to send you the drawings in DWF format instead of PDF. in dwf maanager you have unts & dimenision tool whihc you can use.

[chris_stuart_leach]

Yes I have the pdf and am printing them to ordinary plotter paper.

 

The pdf's say they are to a scale of 1:100@A1

I have two documents of the same building. One of the roof level and one of the ground floor level. When the same scale is input to bluebeam to measure the walls, the measurements of the same walls (on the two different documents) come up at totally different lengths.

the same occurs when i print them off. One comes out at full A1 the other roughly at A4 size (therefore obviously measure differently). This is when i print 100% to scale on the print driver.

 

Dipali, I have been trying to measure pdfs using software called bluebeam which has a good units and dimensions tool. It requires that you input the scale of the drawing and works for some documents. Only for others the document seems to be smaller despite being drawn at the same scale.

[ReMark]

This is what happens when you don't insist on dwg files. PDF files were meant to share documents between different word processing systems not as a substitute for a dwg file. Call the client up and tell them you need the dwg file. Save yourself a lot of time and headaches.

[Tiger]

Yep, gonne agree with ReMark here and you should ask for a DWG if the measurements are vital. Or, depending on the source of the PDFs you could call them and say that something is wrong with the PDFs and could you get new ones with correct dimensions.

[chris_stuart_leach]

thank you,

 

can you advise on good software that is cheap.

Bearing in mind that all I want to do is measure and then print the files, to scale. No fancy stuff.

[eldon]

When printing a PDF file that has been prepared for a certain sheet size, it is essential to have the page scaling set to None.

[ReMark]

You don't have to buy any software as your profile says you have AutoCAD 2011. Ask your client to send you a dwg file then you can measure accurately and print to scale. Why spend money needlessly?

[chris_stuart_leach]

I dont yet own AutoCAD, more of a prospective buyer.

Is there cheaper software that would suit my needs the same?

[ReMark]

CAD software? Yes, perhaps. DraftSight, progeCAD, intelliCAD and ZwCAD to name four. DraftSight, strictly 2D, is free.

 

Draftsight link:

 

http://www.3ds.com/products/draftsight/draftsight-overview/

[Tiger]

If you just want to look at the files, take measurements and then print them - I think Autodesks Viewer would be enough, and its free so try it out.

[chris_stuart_leach]

thank you.

I shall certainly give them a look.

Although in future i dont think asking people to send me the drawings in CAD will be a problem.

Currently I only have the drawings in pdf.

Is there a way of converting pdf to CAD, ensuring all measurements and scalings are correct as drawn?

[ReMark]

I wouldn't bother with conversion programs. They're more trouble than they are worth and the results are mediocre at best.

 

Anyways, since you do not have a CAD program either the point is moot.

Edited November 16, 2010 by ReMark

[Wilbri]

May I suggest that you download progeCAD.

This is AutoCAD "DRG" Compatible software that is able to convert PDF files to DXF files. (price approximately $250.00)

As a retired design draughtsman residing in South Africa where price of AutoCAD ($6000.00) is beyond the pocket of most small businesses, this is definately an answer, but be assured though, that although you are able to open and use up to Acad 2010, that is where it ends in terms of the "bells and whistles" associated with AutoCAD products.

You "get what you pay for" yes but 17 times the price in my country is definately a rip off!

 

Having stated what I have I remain an ardent AutoCAD user. Obviously using employer's or clients software.

 

If you do decide to try progeCAD (30 day free trial download), please advise me if you are successful in converting the PDF document into a scale DWG file as I found it relatively easy?

[Commdec]

We use QuickScale to print our pdf's to scale. Not had any problems yet. We print on A4, A3 and A1.

[BIGAL]

If you drag and drop your pdf into acad then plot from autocad you can remove scaling problems when plotting, rescale pdf image its not as good quality as a Cad dwg obviously.

[cadvision]

you should look at RxView/RxHighlight from Rasterex (www.rasterex.com) They are mulit format viewing programs. you can calibrate a known distance and then measure distances and area. Doesn't matter if cad, PDF, Scanned pencial drawing. If you know a dimension you can then measure any other (assuming the drawing is drawn to scale). More accurate than a scale rule on paper copy & it keeps running totals of the measurement you can then paste into spreedsheet or other document

[cadvision]

If your wanting a CAD package for this type of work, look into nanoCAD (www.nanocad.com) It is free and you can load DWG files and then plot or measure.