Problems with printing to scale

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I wonder if anyone could help me. I'm trying to save a PDF file that will print to scale and usually, what I'd do is use the marquee tool to select the area I want to print then save as.. > pdf > change options to 1:50 (or whatever is relevant) and print the pdf. However, doing that doesn't seem to be working. On paper, it's meant to be 1:50 but it seems to be just shy of that (based on measuring a dining table that is 1x2M).

Was I doing it wrong all along during university?

[Anonymous]

I must confirmed. A table 2×1m:
1. Marque and Save as .pdf in scale 1:10 on A4, then print resulted in 20,07×9,93cm on paper (must be 20×10cm)
2. Marque and print in scale 1:10 on A4, resulted in 20,07×9,93cm on paper (must be 20×10cm)....same as the .pdf
3. Save View and Place on Layout in scale 1:10, then print, resulted in 20,02×9,93cm on paper (must be 20×10cm)

Anyone can explain this?

[Anonymous]

Ah, glad I'm not the only one having problems then!

Hope someone can shed some light on what I'm doing wrong!

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure I follow your descriptions exactly but PDF often creates problems by automatically adjusting the print to fit the selected paper size. I have often seen full sheets saved as PDF which printed at about 97% when Acrobat (or similar) decided to shrink the extents of the sheet to fit the margins.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Matthew. So what would you suggest as a way to accurately to print to scale?

[Anonymous]

You need to set the printer settings for the application that is sending the PDF to the printer. If your printer doesn't have a borderless paper option create a new paper size with no borders and always select the scale and never "entire image(page)", fit to paper or fill entire paper. If the image is too large for the paper size it will usually tell you parts of the image will be cut. The university probably had these settings already set up.

What are you printing to and what application is sending the image to the printer.

[Anonymous]

Gah, I never even considered the printer settings! *head desk*

Thank you so much, I've managed to do it now having changed them a little.

Sometimes it's the simplest things that go over my head.