Digideus Posted July 11, 2005 Report Share Posted July 11, 2005 Guys, A cautionary tale here.... I designed my Vengence V below.... ...and since then ive been trying without much luck to print the thing off full size so I could do any last tweaks and then set about getting the wood. I thought it best to make sure the design was perfect im my opinion before I got any wood for the following reasons.... 1. Money 2. lack of the above actually, the main reason was so that I had a real idea of the dimensions of wood I would need. With a full size plan, I could give EXACT measurements rather than order some wood and discover too late that I didnt have enough!!! So anyway, I managed to use Paint Shop Pro to create a vector image of the design which meant I could scale it without any distortion to the design and not have to pay for the oh so expensive cad programs to do it for me. So there I was with my vector image, enlarged to full size and ready to go. I set up the page to landscape orientation, pressed print.... and I got the top corner of the design. Now this flumoxed me as I expected to get many pages that I would just need to glue together to create a full size template. I tried again.... and again..... changed some settings and tied again... No still not working.... lets try again...... change that.... try again...... And so on it went for the last month while I tried every trick I could but to no avail. Disheartened I turned to Cad Packages, but after realising that most of them were speaking a foriegn language to me, I started phoning around to various print bureaus to get them to do it for me. I finally found one that was local, so I called them and asked them some questions.... "So I have this design saved in a vector file format and need it printed full size on a plotter" "ahhh yes, let me put you on to Rick...." after 10 minutes of horrible on hold music.... "Hi Rick here." "Rick. Can you help me, I have a drawing I did in Paint Shop Pro and need it printed full size. A1 paper should do it" "errrrrr Is that A4 size?" ".... NO, I need it full size. Its a 50in by 18in drawing i did, and I need it printed full size" "hold on...." He goes away and gives me MORE of the terrible on hold music.... "Hi Rick here! Yes you need it on A1 and we can do that" ".....Yes I know" "eh?" "I know you do thats why I called you" "OK.. How will you be sending it to us? Courier?" "... No, I thought Id walk" ".....errrrr.... right... Hold on..." Once again my eardrums are subjected to the abuse that is "on hold music" and just when I feel the life slipping away.... "Hi its Mark here. Can I help you?" I take a deep breath and explain once again that I have a drawing in paint shop pro that I would like printed in full size. That its a vector file and that I will be bringing it in. "OK, with you so far. What do you need to know?" "How much will that cost me?" "Hold on...." ARRRRGGGGHHHHH! MORE ON HOLD MUSIC!!!! "Hi, its £10 for one print." "£10, for a print on A1 paper?" "Yes" "Ok so what do you need from me?" "What format is the file in?" "its in EMF Format, Windows Enhanced Meta File" "ahhhhh.... Can you save it as a Tiff file?" "yes" "OK, cos paint doesnt recognise EMF files" "paint?" "Yes, the paint program you get on the computer. We print it with that....." At this point i put the phone down and cursed myself. OF COURSE! MICROSOFT PAINT, That harmless little program on your computer that hides in the accessories folder on the start bar... That little thing that I never use.... It reads Tiff files.... I quickly opened paint shop pro and saved the file as a tiff, then I eagerly opened Paint and opened the Tiff file in it, and to my amazement, It worked. I pressed print and was overjoyed to see it print all the pages! So the moral to this story is that if you want full size prints of your designs, forget these expensive cad packages. I have paint shop pro and MS Paint, and it works! I now have a full size design on my wall made from 11 peices of A4 paper and Im very happy. Anyway, now I shared this little gem with you all, I expect you will all stop learning Autocad and start using those freebies you never thought youd use.... Enjoy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southpa Posted July 11, 2005 Report Share Posted July 11, 2005 (edited) Thanks for that Digideus, good read, btw! I hope you put those guys on hold when you went to investigate. I would have just pulled a Basil Fawlty and say..."Go away", then hang up. I've been using CAD for my drawings and just email them to a buddy who works in a marine engineering firm as he has access to plotters. But thats a useful snippet of info, thanks! I too, shall investigate. Edited July 11, 2005 by Southpa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digideus Posted July 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 11, 2005 Its nice to learn from other peoples mistakes and general dim wittedemess. I hope I have provided a public service with my stupidity! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
!!METAL MATT!! Posted July 11, 2005 Report Share Posted July 11, 2005 Its nice to learn from other peoples mistakes and general dim wittedemess. I hope I have provided a public service with my stupidity! HAHAHA I like That Man I use Paint For every thing!! It's Great Thing To use !!METAL MATT!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haggardguy Posted July 11, 2005 Report Share Posted July 11, 2005 Oh paint, what can't it do Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t1r12003 Posted July 11, 2005 Report Share Posted July 11, 2005 I use Microsoft Paint as well as Powerpoint. In Powerpoint, I blow the pic up to the desired % and then move it around in 4 separate slides to get 4 quadrants of the full size body. View the slide show to see what each corner will look like to see you have the whole image. Print out 4 pages, then tape together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strato-Master Posted December 21, 2008 Report Share Posted December 21, 2008 Um I hate to bump an old topic but I just spent four hours on google trying to find out how to do what this post describes. Then came here and found it in two min. So I'm wondering If mabey a mod could pin this as a Tut or something because it just saved me money and work. I think us newbs might find this very helpful! Great job on this Digideus! Thank you very much!!!!!!! Out Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sami Ghouri Posted December 22, 2008 Report Share Posted December 22, 2008 that's awesome! i usually use the hooge printer we have at work (i'm an engineer in a consultant company so we have many of those $$$$$$$ plotters) but i DO have to hide and wait for everyone to get out in order to use it so i'd rather do that stuff at home on my A4 printer honestly.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbrown Posted December 22, 2008 Report Share Posted December 22, 2008 Nice, I didn't realise you could do all that with free software. I guess the limit is your imagination. One tip I would add. Always plot with a scale bar or a line of a known length. Measure it before you cut to check that the print hasn't been scaled anywhere along the process. You can make an error in the scale from the design itself to the viewport scale to the export to pdf, tiff or whatever, and then resized accidentally when you press print, especially if you get someone else to print it. Some people just click "scale to fit page" which even if it's only something like 98%.. thats still a 2% error. I've been using CAD for a while now, and whilst it does cost a bit. I would list it very highly on my "most valued tools list" Worth the money I think. But I do like the paint story. if in doubt try paint. Cheers, Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RestorationAD Posted December 22, 2008 Report Share Posted December 22, 2008 Free as in Beer. http://www.inkscape.org/ http://www.gimp.org/ http://sketchup.google.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddiewarlock Posted December 30, 2008 Report Share Posted December 30, 2008 I make my plans like this: first i try to find out what's the real size of the guitar. Then i ask my brother to make me a plan, he uses Free Hand program. Then i take it to one of those places where they print plans, and voila! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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