I want to print a drawing to scale 1:1 in Sketchup Pro. I have read several articles of other people having problems doing this. The only one that I have found that has succeeded is someone who repeatedly opened and closed sketchup. So how does one print a single drawing that is only 2d and is a rectangle 5 13/16" tall, 9 5/8" on the 3rd side and 5 13/16 inches on the 4th side on a single page? Why would this not be a program bug if one were to go to file->print then uncheck both fit to page off and model extents, set the correct orientation.and then click ok to print & not get the drawing printed correctly?
I have tried
taking a screen shot, putting that in Microsoft Photodraw, and printing.
filing my sketchup screen and then printing.with fit to page and model extents off.
read several articles on this forum by people who are experiencing the same issue.
gone through all the print dialog pages for my printer, a Epson WF-5690 and sketchup looking for scaling locations and not found any.
printing with the Use high accuracy HLR both on and off.
Googling although I will continue looking for an answer that works there.
As additional information, I exported the file as 2d model with a file type of dxf and that file is opened with SheetCAM about 10% too big. In the model extents, the scale (though grayed out) is not 1:1.
Are there any places where the model is scaled that I should check?
Anything else that I need to do?
Is there anything that I could have inadvertently clicked that might cause this issue?
Just in case Sage Geoâs world-renowned treatise on printing to scale was not among those youâve read, hereâs another link:
Geoâs Printing to Scale[quote=âdwc309, post:1, topic:23532â]
So how does one print a single drawing that is only 2d and is a rectangle 5 13/16" tall,
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One creates it in a 2D graphics program whose purpose is to produce highly formatted 2D output. It seems to me youâre in a locked-cage death match with SU, trying to get it to do something it wasnât designed for, and itâs winning.
Jim has given you a good answer. Resizing the window the proportions of the paper will get you there. Since you have SketchUp Pro, though, you could use LayOut. No need to resize the SketchUp window, Itâs quick and easy to set up and you can create a PDF that anyone can print at the right scale.
I did read Sage Geoâs treatise on printing. Itâs what led to the question, âWhy would this not be a program bug if one were to go to file->print then uncheck both fit to page off and model extentsâ.
And I did choose front in the standard view, resize the window, zoom to extents, and crop the drawing so that it filled the window. And I did try printing it to a both a pdf and my printer from this state and it didnât work.
What I didnât do was to do those camera steps. I did those just now and it printed 4 pages.
If I tried to set the page size in print dialog and checked fit to page and that didnât work.
And yes it is winning. I can and will do these sorts of drawings in another program if thatâs what it takes. Itâs just that itâs a shame that what seems like a basic feature was left off what is an otherwise very, very nice program.
Iâll look at & try the other suggestions as well.
I donât know that I understand âshrink the SketchUp window down to completely frame my modelâ. If I zoom to extents, the model fills the window which doesnât work. If I put the dimensions on the drawing, they print correctly even though the drawing that was printed wasnât accurate.
Iâd like to add that if sketchup pro could print to scale and output a dxf file that is accurate, it would be possible to go directly from sketchup pro to a 3d printer, plasma cutter, or milling machine. It would greatly increase itâs usability.
Fine, you can call it a bug, but I think that downplays the problem. If you ask me, SUâs control of printed output generally is a major catastrophe. It never has worked right, and has always forced you to do this weird rain dance to get it to work at all.
Between SUâs crude dimensioning and tolerancing ability, itâs lack of support for line weights and line conventions, and its inability to support graphic or symbolic drawing elements (such as weld symbols or Geometric tolerancing or machining finish marks) make it a highly undesirable tool for making 2D paper drawings. Why torture yourself?
Iâm referring to the outside window for SketchUp ⌠if you shrink the whole thing down to frame the model, it forces the extents to be smaller than the physical paper. When you go to print, it puts it on one sheet of paper to scale like it should.
I feel your pain ⌠years ago, I gave up trying to print from SketchUp for the same reason. For some reason I started playing around with the overall window size and noticed that it printed just fine when I did this.
I wonât torture myself (although I sometimes seem to inflict pain on myself without trying ). Itâd be nice to be able to print or create an accurate dxf file for reasons I just added in a reply to your first post.
Various users, myself among them, have identified all kinds of things that would be nice. There is a certain period where one is surprised and disappointed when the SU developers donât immediately adopt oneâs outstanding suggestions, and gradually, not immediately turns into not ever.
Eventually one reaches a state of resignation and even acceptance about SUâs shortcomings because it does what it chooses to do very well.
A quick skimming through this thread didnât find a mention of the necessity of setting your camera to Parallel Projection to be able to print or export 2D images (PDF, EPS, DWG, DXF) to scale. Perspective has no scale.
Another thing: when your SketchUp model is â2Dâ so that all lies in the same plane, exporting it to DWG or DXF as a 3D model will not magically inject any 3D-ness into it. AutoCad stores all coordinates as 3D points, it has no separate â2Dâ format. The advantage of exporting a 3D model is that arcs and circles will export as corresponding CAD objects instead of being reduced to straight line segments as in the 2D exports.
As Anssi says, a perfectly accurate DXF export for CNC is entirely possible, I do it all the time. Make sure its DXF tho, not DWG. For some reason DWG exports curves as line segments.
as jimhami42 has already elaborated above, you need to shrink the program window to the model extents for avoiding the âwhite spaceâ around the model used for calculating the printing area by SU⌠a âZoom Extentsâ is not sufficient.
I was finally able to get an accurate print by changing the scale to 1:1 in the Print dialog.
The steps should then be I guess
Choose a standard view. Camera > Standard Views > Front.
Choose parallel projection. Camera > Parallel Projection
Zoom to extents. Camera > Zoom Extents
If saving for milling or plasma cutting
a. Export as a 2D dxf file. File > Export > 2D graphic.
b. Make sure that a dxf file output is chosen.List item
If printing,
a. click print
b. In the print dialog box in the Print Size area,
i. uncheck Fit to page & use model extents
ii. ensure that the Page size is greater than the model size.
iii. Under scale make sure that it is 1:1
So printing and saving for cnc equipment is doable. It is cumbersome. Many spotted owls gave their lives in achieving this result but many more will be saved in the future.
Once again, thanks to everyone who helped by making suggestions.
