Anyone use the Swift Prints add-in?

[jyager]

I plugged it in and it works brilliantly on my KIP plotter for my ARCH D sized sheets. Effortless. My Kyocera printer however for printing 8.5X11 or 11X17 sketches...it's a nightmare...it refuses to print 1:1. I have been tweaking settings and playing with setting for an hour and getting nowhere.

Anyone have any experience with this?

[jyager]

I did some experimenting with this add-in this morning. Everything to every printer/plotter comes out slightly under scale. It's all being sized to "best fit" instead of "model 1:1.

If I print directly from Inventor, I can set it @ 1:1 and it plots exactly to scale, if I set it @ best fit it plots slightly under (maybe like one dimension tick under on a scale rule).

Swift prints does not have a sizing option, only paper size. When I plot using Swift Prints it comes out exactly the same amount off as when printing "best fit" directly from Inventor.

Seems strange that it would default to this...and even stanger that I seemed to be only the second person to complain about this on the cadtoolbox page for this. Unless no one else there needed their prints to scale. That last comment on the model 1:1 issue was from 8-12, so it seems like I wasted $5.

[jyager]

Got a response from the add-ins creator...

"I’ve added 1:1 as a future enhancement but to tell you the truth, most people don’t care what scale it plots and so it has been low on the priority list."

So are you guys really not concerned with your drawing scale? I know most people probably use the dimensions and aren't laying a scale down on the drawing...but I just can't fathom a production shop or any kind of firm, not expecting a scaled drawing as the default. I mean...why even have a scaled view at all then?

[dlmsdm1]

At my current and previous job; no. We want them to go off the dimensions only. I don't want them trying to find a dimension. Should I leave one off, they should ask for it. All my drawings are NTS.

[jyager]

Yeah I get that. All of our dimensions are QA inspectable so if something is missing on an assembly, an engineering evaluation form has to be filled out to cover it. We don't want them building things from a scale rule.

I just dont understand the point of having sheet and border sizes as well as the potential to scale a view if you're not going to plot it at 1:1. It's not like view scaling is some deeply hidden feature in Inventor. Not that its the end of the world...but if you have a border for a sheet size, it's that size for a reason or else you could just arbitrarily shirnk any drawing down to fit any sheet size and the whole world would descend into drafting darkness.

If we send a submittal drawing to a customer and there may be some odd clearance dimension they'd like to check that maybe we don't want to be held to, or may deem proprietary. Not to mention detailing every possible dimension or combination of dimensions to CYA when scale rules exist seems counter productive.

Telling someone a CAD drawing is not to scale is completely unacceptable to a lot of contractors/utilities. I couldnt even imagine attempting that in a commercial setting...or even a plant setting if you're laying out a decent amount of piping on a skid. A general layout drawing doesn't need as many dimensions as a spool drawing...but that doesn't mean I want to submit a drawing revision to include a dimension, because someone can't scale my print like they've been doing to every other print for 100 years.

[Anonymous]

Jason

You'll be happy to see the latest update is complete and will be submitted to Autodesk for recertification in the next few days. The latest update includes an option to print 1:1 as you requested.

[mgeurts]

Is this usable for Inventor 2010?

[jyager]

That's great news!

[Anonymous]

The version on the Autodesk Exchange App store only works with Inventor 2013 and greater. I have a different legacy version for older versions of Inventor. If you want a copy, send me a message here http://cadtoolbox.com/about

[Anonymous]

Mark, I tried to reply to your email but it came back invalid. You had it end with .cz which Gmail doesn't accept for whatever reason. Do you have another email address?