PDF Scale printing

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

I need a little help. I'm creating PDF's as a better way of having our plans ready to print whenever we need them. The problem is that we are creating our PDF's for 11x17 sheets and no matter what margins we use when we print them out they always print a tiny bit smaller than they should. So we aren't getting them to print at scale.

Please help

[Anonymous]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but here's my take on your question:

A) You are preparing 11x17 sheets for printing at the scale they were drawn for. In this case, just make sure in your print options "Shrink pages to fit sheet size" is not checked.

That's probably what you meant. We wrestled with related issues when we were trying B) to print 24x36 sheets at 50% scale. What we ended up doing was getting Super B paper (13x19), and making a custom sheet definition (Mac) for that paper that had margins dimensioned precisely to produce a 50% reduction when "Shrink pages to fit sheet size" was selected. Alternatively one could select a 50% reduction of the full sheet in the Page Setup dialog, but for some reason prints made that way took a longer to show up. I also would later forget the 50% setting had been put in place.

[Anonymous]

check your plotmaker options in the print dialog. you will then see a preview of the sheet size, along with a box representing the drawing at scale, and you'll have 3 choices: Scale all at (a fixed %), shrink each layout to fit, or shrink largest layout to fit and apply ratio to all.

This is most likely where your problem lies. Also check your page setup to make sure yo're at 100% there.

would hurt to know your OS either. I'm not sure exactly how my advice might transfer to PC-based print interface. We just go through the regular print process, and then choose save as pdf rather than sending to the printers.

hth
Wes

[Anonymous]

One think i have noticed is that the standard sizes are not so standard in different printers (virtual and real printer)
Some times i print from AC so i make a marquee as big as the paper i want but it doesn't always print correctly.

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys, and yeah all these things have been checked. We are getting all the setups set properly all set to print at 100% and also the shrink pages button is also unchecked. We've tried from Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and Acrobat Reader 7.07. And get the same results on both our printers print out exactly the same. We are printing at 1/8 scale (1:96) and the a measurement that, for example, should be 58' measures 57'-8"...

[Scott Boyd Turner]

Rodrigo,

when printing from acrobat set page scaling to none, otherwise the page including margins will be scaled to fit within the printable area of the printer.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Scott,

I wish it was that easy, we've done that but it still comes out a little smaller than it should. We've even printed it to two printers and the same thing occurs.

If we print it out directly from plotmaker there is no problem, but in PDF it still comes out smaller.

[Anonymous]

Rodrigo-

Were you ever able to figure this out? I'm a new member and was looking for help on another topic, but we have this same problem. For us it seems to be a plotter issue (we have an old HP750c). The same PDF files plotted on our printer slightly smaller than scale (like you described) but when we sent them to a printing company their plots are to scale.

We haven't solved this and the work-around is not convenient (plotting PDFs off site). I'd love to know if there is a fix/solution.

April, 2020 Design Group, Maui, Hawaii

[Anonymous]

20,

Sorry my friend, but we haven't been able to resolve this either. Our plotter is an HP 500 and there is no problem with that, but both of our larger format printers (17x11) are another case totally. Both print them at about 4% less than they should.

We have AC 10 but have had so little time that we haven't installed it yet to see if it makes a difference. Unfortunately I don't think anything will happen with that.

[Link]

If you had AC10 you confirm that the problem is not within ArchiCAD, by simply importng the PDF back onto the original layout and comparing the two.

Then you could determine if it's a software/driver problem or a hardware setting. Have you checked the plotter settings using the plotter's own screen menu?

Cheers,
Link.