Print actual size

Hi, I'm new to to librecad. It was easy enough to draw what I needed. But I can't seem to figure out how to print to scale. Or exporting to pdf to be exact. At first I tried just expoering what I had. That was too big. Then I read somewhere online to put a rectangle the size of your paper. So I drew an 8.5x11 rectangle. Now the margins make it too small. Nowhere can I find a setting to change the margins. I can't even find out how big the margins are. This shouldn't be this hard! I thought this would be easier than using a paper and compass and ruler, but it's turning out not to be. Please help! This is what I have now: Untitled2.dxf

your dxf seems to be empty.

Please test the dxf I attached.

0, make sure you are running librecad-2.0.7 or later(git);
1, open the attached printing_size.dxf in LC;
2, File->Print Preview;
3, In toolbar area, type in scale 1:1 , Press Enter to accept;
4, Optional, center to page center by clicking the "Center to Page" button in the same toolbar;
5, File->Export to PDF;

Please note the step 5 is vital. Selecting File->Print, followed by choosing "Print to PDF", may not keep the scaling.


printing_size.dxf

print_size.pdf

steve4835 wrote

Hi, I'm new to to librecad.
It was easy enough to draw what I needed.  But I can't seem to figure out how to print to scale.  Or exporting to pdf to be exact.  At first I tried just expoering what I had. That was too big. Then I read somewhere online to put a rectangle the size of your paper.  So I drew an 8.5x11 rectangle.  Now the margins make it too small.  Nowhere can I find a setting to change the margins.  I can't even find out how big the margins are.  This shouldn't be this hard!  I thought this would be easier than using a paper and compass and ruler, but it's turning out not to be.  Please help! This is what I have now: Untitled2.dxf

" 5, File->Export to PDF;

" Please note the step 5 is vital. Selecting File->Print, followed by choosing "Print to PDF", may not keep the scaling.

Yes, that should work well.  -- But I didn't see why that'd be a problem for me   -- Here's why it was...

 My "oversized" 12" x 12" drawing - a router template, that was arranged so that only the center section would print on US Letter size paper, was getting reduced a touch.   Even when I carefully tweaked the scale to enlarge it a touch.

I'm  using LibreCad on a Linux platform, and it took a while to figure out that in my printer properties there was an option ticked that "scaled to fit" anything that exceeded the page size if it didn't already contain scaling data. ( such as the 1:1 printout)
The image being sent was the 8.5 x 11 inch image, but the printer driver scaled that for the minimum margin (.2 inch in x,y).

Now with that box un-ticked, I get my expected 1:1.
 

By exporting to PDF then printing that PDF file, the PDFdriver probably would have bypassed that issue - but as mentioned a direct "Print to PDF" probably would have auto-scaled also.

Note that I also had to select the correct paper size in Options/Drawing Preferences/Paper