Wilsons Sandbox

I am new to cadintosh and CAD drawing.
My goals are modest and for now I would like to understand how to print out drawings at
different scales.

I drew a 5 foot strut at 1:1 scale and, of course, can't print that on one page.
But I seem not to be able to reduce/change the scale for printing.
(I have not used the % scaling in the printing routine, though.)

Uwe

At 2005-05-16 11:49 +0000 othello159 wrote:

>I am new to cadintosh and CAD drawing.
>My goals are modest and for now I would like to understand how to
>print out drawings at
>different scales.
>
>I drew a 5 foot strut at 1:1 scale and, of course, can't print that
>on one page.
>But I seem not to be able to reduce/change the scale for printing.
>(I have not used the % scaling in the printing routine, though.)

Uwe - you can use the % box in the page setup dialogue to adjust
things a bit, but it has its limits (25% & 400% I think but that may
be printer-dependent).

You really need to decide before starting to draw anything what is a
sensible scale for it when printed out. For your 5-foot strut perhaps
1:5 might just fit it on a single page. I find that my A3 inkjet
printer is really useful for those items that won't fit within A4 at
a nice round scale. You can define your own scale (like 1:7.3) to
make it fit nicely. And don't confuse scale with display zoom! The
tool you use to adjust scaling is among the stuff at bottom left.
Zooming is done with the buttons at top right, and does not affect
how big it will be when printed.

There is a change scale option in the CADintosh groups menu, but I
haven't got around to trying that. It only applies to groups, so
maybe if you put the entire drawing into one group you could then
change it all at once? Try this on a backup copy of the drawing, and
let us know if it works, please! Or maybe someone else here can give
a better answer?

regards

Rowland
--
| Wilma & Rowland Carson
| ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...

On May 16, 2005, at 5:05 PM, Rowland Carson wrote:

> Uwe - you can use the % box in the page setup dialogue to adjust
> things a bit, but it has its limits (25% & 400% I think but that may
> be printer-dependent).

I certainly agree that you don't want to use the page setup scaling.
That's both clumsy and possibly not as accurate as might be desired.
I'm guessing from what you've written and from what I've scanned in
tkat's tutorial that an alternative approach may not be evident to
everybody.

> You really need to decide before starting to draw anything what is a
> sensible scale for it when printed out.

I don't agree with this, though. In fact, I see little utility in
setting a drawing scale at all. That's just so pen-and-paper. I think
the advantage of doing things in a CAD program is that you can draw
what you really mean. Scaling is an output issue; it's not intrinsic to
the thing you're drawing. I draw everything at 1:1. I zoom as
appropriate to keep the object in view and I don't worry at all about
what the scale is between the object and its display on screen. As you
say, zooming is completely separate from printing.

I then use different printing areas with different appropriate scales
to print different parts of my drawing. To do this, I select File >
Area > Select Area With Page. Click on the drawing and a you can drag a
rectangle showing the page that will be printed. Don't worry if it's
enormous (if you're drawing watch gears) or tiny (if you're drawing
office buildings). Position the page anywhere in the drawing. When
prompted, give the area an appropriate name for the portion of the
drawing you want to print: "everything", "corner of gear tooth", "third
floor bathroom", etc. Now select File > Area > Options, select the
print area you just created, and now you can specify the scale for that
printout. Finally, you can select File > Area > Move Area to position
the newly scaled print area as desired. Note that there's an option to
"Define view with same settings" when you create the print area.
Unfortunately, when you rescale and move the print area, any associated
view doesn't follow, which renders it pretty useless, so I wouldn't
bother to create the view (if it did follow the print area, it'd be
really useful, though).

You can create many different print areas, either to print at different
scales, or to print detailed drawings of multiple portions of the
overall drawing. For my purposes, it seems less confusing to have a
single drawing with everything in it, regardless of detail, then to
have different parts of the drawing have different scales (which I
didn't even know was possible until you guys brought it up).

At 2005-05-19 22:58 -0400 Jon Guyer wrote:

>select File > Area > Options, select the
>print area you just created, and now you can specify the scale for that
>printout

Jon - thank so much for pointing this out! I just had not noticed
that it was possible to specify the printing scale in this way.
Flowing from that, I now tend to agree with your conclusion that
CADintosh drawings may as well all be made at 1:1 - although no doubt
someone will come up with reasons for drafting at other scales.

>it seems less confusing to have a
>single drawing with everything in it, regardless of detail, then to
>have different parts of the drawing have different scales (which I
>didn't even know was possible until you guys brought it up)

I agree that in general CAD makes obsolete many of our former
practices, and in general try to have everything drafted at a single
scale. My previous example of multiple scales was where I was
producing a diagram for insertion into a word-processor document. For
layout purposes it was handiest to have a single diagram containing
both the relevant piece of metal shown "full-size" and a reduced view
indicating how that part fitted into the surrounding structure.

Thanks for your very helpful contribution.

regards

Rowland
--
| Wilma & Rowland Carson
| ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...

On May 20, 2005, at 8:53 AM, Rowland Carson wrote:

> I now tend to agree with your conclusion that
> CADintosh drawings may as well all be made at 1:1 - although no doubt
> someone will come up with reasons for drafting at other scales.

Probably so, and I'd be interested to learn where it's useful.

> My previous example of multiple scales was where I was
> producing a diagram for insertion into a word-processor document.

I can see the utility, and I'm glad you pointed out that it can be done.

> Thanks for your very helpful contribution.

My pleasure. Thanks to you and tkat for actually spelling out your
learning processes. I have a sneaking suspicion that we're all secretly
a bit baffled by CADintosh (although from what I've seen of the manuals
and training courses for things like AutoCAD, I think abject confusion
may be the nature of the beast).