topic Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4 in AutoCAD Forum

AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

TitanNut88 — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 09:53:27 GMT

I got some pdf documents which were originally in scale 1/100 for A3. I imported the documents in AutoCAD and I am working on them. I want to print them in A4 with an acceptable scale but I can't. I put the drawing inside an A4-sized rectangle. In the model, 1m measures 7.07 units (scale factor from A3 to A4). How can I print it so the 1 m in the drawing is 1 unit in 1:100 scale?

[ The subject line of this post has been edited to include the product name by @handjonathan ]

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

imadHabash — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 10:38:50 GMT

Hi and Welcome to AutoCAD Forum,

Depending on your drawing size .. maybe it's bigger than A4 size! You have to check that your A4 rectangle size have the same unit dimension for your CAD elements and objects.

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

pendean — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:01:44 GMT

Share your DWG file with the problem here for others to examine/test please.

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

dany_rochefort — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:42:58 GMT

@TitanNut88

Here are some example setups of A3 & A4 page setups and plot setup of 1:100.

A3 @ 1 : 100 scale equivalent would be A4 scale 1:150 or 1:175 roughly for it to fit into similar size template geometry without having to move or fiddle around with detail placement. Never scale the drawing. Always scale up the template around the drawing instead.

If you can replicate the example provided you will be well on your way to understanding scales, pages setups and plot setups 🙂

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

pendean — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:12:24 GMT

@dany_rochefort Thanks for the mm-units DWG: what about the PDFs or the PDF content?

And I don't understand why your model content is not at 1:1 scale, the norm for drafting in the program for most of us, can you explain?

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

dany_rochefort — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:44:02 GMT

Model is A4 1 : 100, as written. Thus 100 times larger than actual A4 size. Your 297mm X 210mm 1:1 rectangle is too large to fit within the plot limits of paperspace. So to avoid the red lines in the plot preview window and having to use Scale to Fit option, 297mm X 210mm geometry is scaled down by a factor o .99% to stay within the defined plot limits in paperspace. Once that is done, just scale up your 1:1 template geometry to any scale required and zoom onto it via your viewport, which is proportionally identical to the red rectangle in modelspace. I could have removed the decimal places on my MM dimensions to make it look less wonky though !But OP was about printing A3 1:100 on A4 sheet, everthing in my example provided is setup to do just that, Modelspace, Paperspace and Paperspace Plot setups.

Best Regards,

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

TitanNut88 — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:59:45 GMT

Thanks all for your help. I am attaching the document I am refering to.

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

pendean — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 14:38:01 GMT

@TitanNut88 wrote:

Thanks all for your help. I am attaching the document I am refering to.

Thank you for the DWG file: it appears your 80mm door widths indicate your DWG file's model content is not set to 1:1 scale, and may well be why plotting is a challenge

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

dany_rochefort — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 15:32:50 GMT

2 small issues with this dwg that were tripping you up.

First, the plan was drawn in CM, not MM. Thus everything was 10X too small. So everything must be scaled up by 10X for yor pagestups and plots setups to work. Pagesetups and plot setups are based Millimeters when you use the metric scale, inches for imperial. 5m for example must equal 5000, not 500 as this drawing was showing.

Second, the person who gave you this drawing was wrong in saying that is what an A3 1:100. It was actually bigger than that... As you can see in the attched drawing, that layout doesnt quite fit into A3 1:100.

For all this to work within an A4 sheet, your scale must be set to roughly 1 : 175. Although that scale works, 1 :175 is not a standard scale and A4 1:200 would be a more approriate scale to use considering you will need to add annotations anyways...

Anyhow, those are the small issues that were tripping you up. If you have other questions let me know !

Re: AutoCAD - Struggling with printing on scale in A4

ChicagoLooper — Fri, 14 Oct 2022 16:22:32 GMT

@TitanNut88 wrote

<<... I want to print them in A4 with an acceptable scale but I can't. ...>>

If you scale your new drawing by using the original scale of 1:100 then you won't be able to fit it on an A4 sheet because A4 is smaller than A3. Using 1:100 on A3 will fit, but when you switch to A4, you'll have less printable space so you'll need to use another, more appropriate scale, such as 1:150.

First make sure you know how to determine the DRAWING UNITS of your drawing file. If you already know how to look it up, you'll see your drawing units are set to METERS. No, you're not drawing in mm and you're not in cm. <<It is critical to know the drawing units. Ignoring the units will give you problems.>>
Next, make your drawing lengths are 'real world' measurements. Select ALL objects in your drawing and use the SCALE command to resize all objects to their real world measurements. You can do this by referencing the scalebar so it's exactly 5.00 meters long. When you resize the scalebar then all other 'selected objects' will resize with it. After SCALE command, verify the length of the scalebar. See image-1.
Finally, when you print from modelspace, make your plot window like this. See image-2.Image-1

Image-2