Printing or exporting 1:1 scale- is this possible?

Does this work? I deleted the guide points and moved the top set of holes closer to the bottom set. I also moved them to the origin because placing the model at a long distance from the origin is a bad thing.

This is the Print Preview pane, then, showing that the two sets of holes will print on a single sheet.

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That preview looks more like the ones I got in the SSDE+ program that were off by tiny amounts by row 40… and the margins look about right. I had the horizontal spacing figured out. it is the vertical spacing over the length of the card that is giving me fits. it isn’t a normal spacing… I originally thought it was european 5mm spiral binding spacing vertically, but it is a little bigger than 5mm apart.
I did think to try to move the whole closer to axis, but the program froze up on me. so I finally hollered for help…
Ok, it had finally started working again so I moved it to the red axis and will try to get it closer.

When I uncheck fit to page and use model extents, the scale side stays greyed out… bot it usually is in 1:1… but I had tried to input the measurements in mm in page size…

In order to be able to print to scale, the camera needs to be set to Parallel Projection. When I opened your SKP file, it was set to Perspective.

Denisroy, yours looks just like what I have been getting. the margins tell me immediately that it is too small… when printed the vertical spacing was actually about 4.05mm vertically by calipers. Thanks, for helping me try to figure this out… when designing in SU for woodworking projects I have never had this problem… cause all graphics are scaled down to print…

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I swear it was set to parallel when I started out!! Blast! I just moved it closer to the axis and reset it to parallel, so let me try printing once again…

Holes.pdf (209.7 KB)

How does this PDF work out for you? Print it with no scaling (that’s a setting in Reader/Acrobat) and measure the spacing.

Well… I just report what I see.

The thing is, this same sort of thing could be useful in woodworking, too.

is your viewport set to the paper ratio?

do you have a scan of an original card…

The spacing in the holes.pdf was too wide… I may have to actually export as svg and cut a couple of pages… maybe first and last rows… I just hate wasting paper.

Yes that is a Jac40, There were actually three such devices made for different gauge machines: Jac40 (blue) tines spaced 4.5mm apart for standard Japanese machines and 9mm bulky Japanese machines using every other needle/tine; Passap Jac (Silver and red) for 5mm Swiss Passap machines, and Knittax Jac (gold) for 5.3mm Japanese machines. I have the first two Jacs (blue and silver) and also have 6 knitting machines, 5 of which use punchcards, and three Passaps (one has electronic patterning on the front bed only), a fine gauge 3.6mm, a standard gauge 4.5mm, and a bulky gauge 9mm, Japanese machines.
Yes I am lucky enough to have a blank Passap Jac card as well as several mass produced pre-punched cards for the Deco (has a wider margin but the same hole spacing). I have three Jac40 mass produced pre-punched cards and no blank Jac40 cards. I have multiple blank japanese cards, both blank and pre-punched.
Punching the cards is exhausting and messy. and very likely to end up with a ruined card. These things are expensive-- the blank Passap cards go for as much as $40 for a single card. There is a video on youtube where a lady designs a card in JW CAD in Japanese and prints and cuts the card on the die cutter I have… using plain kraft paper card and patterns would be easy to make and use if I can get the dimensions right. The holes have to be precisely spaced for the little metal tines to go through them without cutting the edges of a misplaced hole and ruining the pattern and card… The Jac accessories especially allow patterning on the back of double bed knitting or ribbing… so they are extremely versitile IF I can produce cards for them…

Thanks for your help.

The dimensions I showed in the PDF are based on what you drew although they get rounded. The actual vertical spacing is 5.25 mm. If they aren’t correct, that’s because of your spacing and not the print out. Exactly what spacing are you looking for?

I used the measure tool to set points to snap to when drawing the circles… I just went back and measured them… 5mm…

I am personally beginning to thing it is my printer adding a spin on everything… Let me see if I can take a couple of photos…

An actual Passap Deco Card: Card Pattern Number 9a
This is what the file is making a blank of… ALL holes punched so that the holes can be deleted easily to build another pattern.

5 mm horizontally. What are they supposed to be vertically?

Passap Deco card 9a overlaying the Silhouette Studio Designer Edition Plus file printed out (as close as that program can get…)

down the page, you can see the drift starting. some patterns are several pages snapped together in a long line so the drift is a serious issue.

My print out from SU

the “main body” of holes are 5mm horizontally on center, and 5.25mm vertically on center
or that was what i was trying for since 5.2 was a little too little, and 5.3 was a little too much, even calipers get cranky when measuring such tiny fractions

and this is the last one…

You might try running a few calibration tests on your printer.

Issues with paper feed not precisely matching the printhead travel axis could easily account for the slight drift that’s being shown here.

Maybe consider simplifying your test to focus on, and hopefully rule out errors of this nature. If you can determine a reliable percentage, then that can possibly be adjusted within the model. And hopefully SketchUp will have the internal accuracy to scale at such a fine degree should it be necessary.

This is after all an average/standard printer, and not a CAD plotter which is going to factor in and try to account for accuracy throughout the printed cartesian space – with an emphasis and goal of perfectly matched x/y distances on the plots.

Achieving near perfect results is not so easy, even when working with a specialized CAD plotters, and a favorite set of vernier calipers in hand. I’ve done this a number of times and there is usually an element of frustration involved somewhere along the line, if that’s of any comfort to you.


for a nice detailed overview see… laser printer dimensional accuracy? | Tom's Hardware Forum


As a workaround, see if you can implement a centerline approach and work out in both directions from there. Right now you’re starting on one end and moving the array across the entire sheet, with every discrepancy accumulating along the way (from the position of the printers inaccuracies, not SU’s)

Perhaps working from the center of the form. and fudging your distances to both sides will bring you within an acceptable range on your print outs.

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You would probably get a more accurate c/c placing if you measured the length of the whole row or column of circles, and, in SketchUp, used the division method to array them.

Anssi