1:1 scale in drawings is actually 96.3% - even when the printer can handle 1:1

[edwardsc3]

I noticed this problem a while ago, but now it's time to document it fully. Fusion does not print at 1:1 scale when it is set to 1:1; it prints at about 96.3%.

Here's an object that I made to demonstrate the difference. The object is a 250mmx100mm rectangle, with lines at 10mm increments and then 25mm increments. I extruded the segments to alternating heights of 1mm and 2mm (the extrusion is only used so that the drawing lines are clearer in the photo). Here is that drawing compared to an Incra metric ruler which has 0.25mm precision. The dimensions were added with the dimension tool in the drawing mode. 250mm, drawn to scale but not printed to scale

The obvious response to this is to suggest that my printer is shrinking the image, or that the default outer border is having some effect. So, first I removed the border, but there is no change. I should also note that there are no printer options available in Fusion, at least not with my setup.

250mm drawing isn't at 1:1 scale, without the default border

And so the next question is if my printer is scaling it down. I tested this by making a new drawing in a different program - the online version of SmartDraw - using a 1 cm : 1 cm scale and making similar lines. I had to add the lengths in manually rather than with a dimensioning tool, but the onscreen measurements and grid make it easy to correctly apply those. I used fewer lines for the sake of brevity.

SmartDraw correctly sizes to 100%

I made the drawing from the first two images entirely in Fusion this evening, without sending it through any other program, so there is no way that other software could interfere with it. All this was done on the same computer with the same printer. My printer is a Canon MG 5220, but I can also use other printers over the next few days and I expect I would see the same result. The paper size is 8.5"x11" and the printer settings in Fusion were for 8.5"x11". I have seen this problem with the exact same shrinkage amount in drawings that came with supplier parts months ago, so either they also use Fusion and this is a long-standing problem, or it's common across many CAD programs.

Personally, I was expecting to use 1:1 printouts to help form some components I am making. A 1:1 diagram can be printed, cut, and glued onto a part to provide all the markings necessary for the first pass of machining (see the ClickSpring youtube channel, he often uses that shortcut). 

[shuklav]

Thanks for reporting this issue.

I believe this issue could be because of an ANSI A size sheet (11'x8.5') [i.e. (279.4mmx216mm)] being printed on an ISO A4 (297mmx210mm) paper. For Fusion's ANSI A sheet, we always print the layout area between point {0.04',0.13'} to point {10.96',8.37'}, so that we have most of the border in the print. So the printable area for ANSI A sheet is 10.92'x8.24' (i.e. 277.4mmx209.3mm). We try to fit this area within the printable area of the paper. 

For the printer I debugged, which has only ISO A4 papers, I found that ANSI A sheet is getting printed on a paper with a printable area of 273mmx209.55mm. To adjust the layout on this paper we have to scale the print.

We can do 1:1 if we ignore some part of the border while printing. Please suggest if it is OK to ignore some part of the border while printing.

[edwardsc3]

I measured my paper to double-check, and the paper is 279.5 x 215.75 (basically ANSI A letter 8.5 x 11), so it's the same size that my printer is set for - at least to the extent that I can set the printer. Everything through my system is set for the Ansi A letter 8.5x11 paper size.

Notably, Fusion doesn't include any paper sizing options at all. It just picks up whatever printer configurations are set elsewhere and uses those - which is a horrible practice in my opinion. 

[laughingcreek]

---

@shuklavwrote:

We can do 1:1 if we ignore some part of the border while printing. Please suggest if it is OK to ignore some part of the border while printing.

---

Oh god! of course ignore what ever has to be ignored to achieve 1:1 printing (no scaling) when print options are set that way.  Why should it EVER be any way else.  If we want it to fit on the paper, we'll select the scaling to be "fit to paper".  Are the other scaling's being thrown off also? is 1:4 scaling not ALWAYS 1:4? Considering a LOT of people are using 1:1 drawings for templates this is a big deal..

[chrisplyler]

I'm printing the default ASME A "From Scratch" template sheet, which claims to be 8.5"x11".

I'm printing it to a printer in the USA where we have actual 8.5"x11" sheets of paper.

It's getting scaled down so that every bit of ink on the template sheet fits within the printer's borders.

This is not happening at the printer. If I first output it to a PDF and then print it from Adobe Reader, the scaling doesn't happen. What happens instead is that the printer can only get so close to the edge of the paper and so some ink is lost at the border. This behavior IS STRONGLY PREFERRED.

Give the user a check box or a setting somewhere in the print dialog to "scale to fit" if that's what the user wants. But it should NOT be the default and it should NEVER happen without the user explicitly picking it. ESPECIALLY in software used by engineers/architects/designers/etc.

I've very surprised that a company like Autodesk would allow someone on the Fusion development team who wouldn't innately understand this. If a machinist told his buddies that his CNC mill arbitrarily decided to cut his block of aluminum down to 93% of the size he had intended, the entire machining world would poop masonry.

[cmiller66]

Hi edwardsc3,

Can you confirm the standard of the drawing you're printing? Is it ISO/A4 being scaled to fit to an ANSI A (8.5" x 11") sheet?

Even if that is the case, as chrisplyler found, with everything consistent (1:1, ASME A sheet, inch units, 8 1/2" x 11" paper size) the output is still getting scaled to fit the printable area, not the sheet.

I have created a defect to track this (internal ref: FDWG-9578). In the meantime, printing the PDF (which will allow forcing the 1:1 print scale) would be the workaround until we get this addressed. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and thank you for reporting this.

Thanks,
Chris

[edwardsc3]

cmiller66, I can confirm that it's designed as an ASME 8.5 x 11 letter. Aside from the fact that my setup doesn't do any ANSI letter <-> A4 conversion (shown with screenshots below), if you run the numbers, this is NOT just an error when converting between paper sizes, because 96.3% is not a conversion scale between A4 and letter. With both in metric, A4 width is 210mm while letter width is 215.9mm, which is 97.2%. Meanwhile A4 height is 297 while letter height is 279.4mm, which is 106.3% (or 94.1%).

I just checked my ruler against 150mm calipers and it is dead-on accurate to the extent that calipers can measure, which is roughly to 0.02mm over 100mm. My SmartDraw printing measures exactly 250mm at its 250 mark, and I checked its 100mm line with the calipers and I got 100.03mm. This metric ruler has hole spacing at 0.25mm, and each of those holes is 0.5mm in diameter (thus fitting 0.5mm mechanical pencils - pretty clever), so even the ruler measurements can be very precise.

Add all this together, and we find that my printer is making the lines more-or-less exactly where they are supposed to be, and my tools are measuring those lines to within 0.1mm over 100mm even after accounting for line widths. Every time, every line, it comes out between 96.0% and 96.5%. I've spent a disconcerting portion of my software development career counting pixels and fixing micrometer-sized errors and this is ringing alarm bells in my head, because this shouldn't be going through any paper size conversion. But mostly because this might be a very old error, or one that has occurred in the past. I happen to have a product from years ago that was inexplicably made at 96.4% scale; but the company could never justify why or explain how it happened. If the factory made measurements off the printed diagrams, then this could be the explanation - which is remarkable considering that the product is a piano. It's an unlikely chance, but it might solve that mystery.

cmiller66, here's a screenshot from Fusion showing that ASME A 8.5 x 11 is selected

Sizing sheet, showing ASME A 8.5 x 11 letter size

And here are two screenshots from my printer settings. First the quick setup:

 Canon MG5200 printer Quick Setup settings

And then the full page setup, with the Margins dialog box opened to confirm it doesn't add any margins:

And just to make sure none of the settings changed since yesterday, I printed off a new sheet after getting these screenshots. It has the same scaling issue as the original sheets:

250mm not-to-scale sheet, printed after confirming printer settings

So as far as I can tell, this is a Fusion error.

[benjamin_rockwell]

I was having this same problem, so I did a little digging. In my case, I am using a HP 2270DW laser printer on Windows 10. After outputting the drawing to PDF so that I could adjust the print settings, I found there was a "Page Scaling" option (on the "Advanced" tab of the Print dialog)  which controls print behavior when the drawing exceeded the paper print area. The default value was to "Shrink pages to printable area" I changed it to "Use original page sizes" and the drawing printed to scale, but the drawing frame was cut off off. This indicates that Fusion is generating drawings that have data outside the print area of some printers for standard paper sizes. Perhaps the standard drawing frame templates need to be adjusted.

[TimeraAutodesk]

@benjamin_rockwell - This issue is not being ignored. As you can see in @cmiller66's last post, he explicitly provided a tracking ID for this issue as well as a viable workaround in the meantime.

"I have created a defect to track this (internal ref: FDWG-9578). In the meantime, printing the PDF (which will allow forcing the 1:1 print scale) would be the workaround until we get this addressed. Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused, and thank you for reporting this."

We will continue to track this issue and will address it as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience.

[benjamin_rockwell]

Great, thanks for the update. I updated my post with a solution I found.

Edit: Sorry, my mistake. I missed that portion of his post, and found his same solution the hard way.

[ranbro]

I encountered this problem yesterday so I did a test with Autodesk Inventor and it scaled perfectly. Maybe you can borrow the set-up from that.

It would be great if you can get this fixed since Fusion is much easier to use than Inventor for a hobbyist.

[Anonymous]

This isn't fixed yet? Team! It's 2019, I'm using Fusion 360 at work and I cannot print a 1:1 drawing from Fusion to our Xerox Phaser.

We need print settings. I'm sure the driver is scaling the drawing to fit in the printable area. I'll have to print to PDF first then print from other software.

[edwardsc3]

ivanSESRR,

Their best suggestion is to print to PDF, and then print to paper. They assigned it error number FDWG-9578, but I don't know of any way for someone outside AutoDesk to track that. 

At my company, we ended up cancelling all our AutoDesk licenses and switching to other products. The bugs and poor workflows (usually in products other than Fusion) were costing us too much productivity. We went through the learning curve for other software.

Since we made that decision, we have made outstanding progress in our work, and saved a lot on licensing costs.

[gtprototype]

Hasn't this gone on long enough? 

If this had been corrected in a timely fashion, I wouldn't have found this bug some 19 months later.  Imagine my frustration trying to correct this problem by actually looking at my printer.  I find it ironic that software, developed by one of the oldest companies in the CAD industry, produces drawings that don't match the scale indicated on the actual printed drawing.  Since the beginning of CAD haven't accurate drawings been the goal? 

I sincerely hope that the PDF work around hasn't matured into the accepted solution.

[TimeraAutodesk]

I appreciate your frustration, but please keep in mind that the team is working as quickly as they can to deliver the mountain of work that needs to be done on the Drawings workspace as quickly as they can. Until we can address this issue, I do hope that the PDF workaround will help fill the gap, even if it is an inconvenience. 

[Anonymous]

Hi Timera,

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you have dozens of frustrated users not because of the PDF workaround, but because of poor feature implementation Fusion 360 let us print 96% scaled work when every user reasonably assumed it was 1:1. 

In my case I printed out a mock-up for a adhesive dyeline, cut a product sample and put up a test only to later find out it was about 2mm too small.

I'm sure there is a lot of work to do on drawings... But how difficult is it to disable direct print and force everyone to print to pdf? This one little change would eliminate all future complaints on this issue. Meanwhile this is certainly forcing me to question my own Fusion advocacy. 

Hope something gets worked out soon!

-Ivan

[gtprototype]

I recognize the pace which Fusion is moving forward and I applaud the development team's efforts.  The user community along with the attentiveness and speed at which most things are addressed has become the standard by which I measure all the other CAD/CAM packages that I utilize.  

This bug is foundational, everyone EXPECTS a drawing to be scaled correctly.  If the team needs some time to work on it I suggest some kind of popup notification so that others don't go down the same rabbit hole I did, trying to correct their printer.

Just before I started to use Fusion regularly, I was working on an extensive sheet metal project that required full scale plots, this would have stopped me dead in my tracks.

[etfrench]

Just printing to pdf isn't a good solution.  Microsoft Edge doesn't have a print setting to force printing the full size when the print is outside the margins (at least none that I can find). 

[Anonymous]

Put my name on the list of frustrated customers.

FYI... We are paying the subscription service and do not get solutions in a short time.

This 1 to 1 feature is a CRITICAL one and must be solved NOW!!!

[Anonymous]

I can also confirm this issue still exists in year 2020. I've noticed this a few times over the past couple of years, and was quite surprised to see that the issue still exists. Luckily I don't really need 1:1 scale drawings too often in my own personal setting, so I can get by scaling these proportionally by the percentage of error, but regardless this probably should have been patched by now. I'll measure my drawings to see if there's a mutual 96.3% scale error, as I haven't yet measured the exact proportion of error just yet.