[Pro] Page size, paper size, rulers, grid and dimensions...

Legacy Intaglio
1

Hi there. I’ve been using Intaglio for a long time now and I’ve fount this “ACTUAL SIZE” button in Layout/Zoom panel.

At first I’d like to admit, that I am using 4 different scales and everything works just fine for me. I mean that for example I can draw 1:25 scale, with right dimensions, printed just perfectly on my printer. For a vinyl cutter, when 1:1 scale is needed everything works fine too.

BUT:
When it comes to printing → Things are not really in scale on the A4 paper… I mean that everything is printed well, the text shown, says right what I was drawing but
When it comes to 1:1 scale design to work with a cutter, the image on screen can’t be seen in 1:1 size on the LCD panel… I’d like to be able to work in 1:1 scale, be able to click “ACTUAL SIZE” which would let me to see the real dimensions of the drawing and finally let it printed in a way that my laser printer would have drawing printed in exact 1:20 scale for example…

QUESTION 1: How to set all these things to make it possible
QUESTION 1a: Is it possible?

QUESTION 2: How this magic “ACTUAL SIZE” works? Why would I want to use it if it don’t lead me to the real "actual size of the drawing?

My thoughts:
I’d like to draw on my screen in 1:1 scale, meaning that 5cm in real world could be measurable right on the LCD screen of my monitor. So this obviously changes every time I change the zoom setting. So, the “ACTUAL SIZE” would bring a right scale to a view to make it possible to see thing in the real size. Always in the same manner. It actually works like this, but the result is far from perfect on my screen ( maybe there is a “actual size scale setting” somewhere there?

Generally the problem is that if I set a scale and everything for my screen, then I do have a weird scale on my output file for a cutter. When the output size for a cutter is correct, ACTUAL SIZE does not show the 1:1 scale on my screen…

How You deal with it?

It would be perfect to draw and view things in 1:1 scale and then have the option to print it in for example 1:20 scale.

I don’t really know where is the problem. Maybe I don’t have intelligent enough printer driver, maybe I am missing something. Or maybe there should be a “ACTUAL SIZE” scale setting somewhere there…

Can You deal with this? Can You help? :slight_smile:

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2

Intaglio’s measurements and dimensions are very confusing—I’ve never really ‘got’ it. I keep it simple and use A4.

‘Actual Size’ only works some of the time—another mystery!

This seems to work:

  1. In the Measurements and Dimensions palettes, specify Units>Millimetres.
  2. In Page Setup, choose A4 (210 x 297mm) and make the Scale 70%. On my screen, when you measure the document with a ruler, it’s 210 mm wide.
  3. Draw an A4-sized box and position on the document area.
  4. Draw a second box 10mm inside the first box—with a stroke, so that it prints.
  5. Print the document. The inside box prints, but it’s slightly offset to the left.

I have no idea how or why this works! Reducing the scale to 70% in Page Setup should reduce the printed size, but it prints at 100%…

I’m not sure what you mean by 1:20 scale. If you mean 1/20th actual size, just scale it to 5% and print at 100%.

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3

As far as I can remember it has taken half a day do deal and finally understand and set all this stuff to make it possible to work with my projects…

I’ll try to aim You a bit, then we will deal with this mysterious “actual size” tool.

So in general we do print on A4 or whatever size of a media. This is not changing, so we want our printed sketches to be seen on this size of paper.

I produce furniture, so I draw in Intaglio to show my customers basic sketches of their future stuff.

So I do use 2 scales, which makes it possible to show 5m long furniture to fit on just one A4 page.
This was my goal at first when I’ve set the Intaglio.

For this purpose, I need adequate RULLERs:
One in 1:20 scale and another in 1:25 scale.
The 1:20 scale is on my ruler no. 3.
1:25 is on my RULLER no. 4 . This is used less often, but sometimes it is also needed.

Basic setting is:
MEASUREMENTS: RULLER no. 3 → Units: Centimeters, Scale 1 Centimeter = 20 Centimeters.

This means exactly that 1 Centimeter on the paper means 20 centimeters in the real world. And it actually works like a charm :slight_smile:

I do have a scale set and now I want to set a GRID.
So: I want my square to move 0,5cm on one press of the arrow on my keyboard (or simply move anything sellected by the smallest step according to a GRID which would be 0,5cm.) And I want to see how much is 10cm.
So I set a GRID to 10 and subdivisions to 20. Again this means exactly that I will see a grid line every 10 cm and will snap to it and also I will be able to snap to every middle between the lines. (or simply snap to every 10/20 = 0,5 cm)
This also works like a charm. Always. But the first annoying thing is that sometimes I find grid set to something like 4,23 with 20 subdivisions and I hate that I don’t know why or when it happens! So I ask myself WHY for the first time. :slight_smile:

OK, so I have the scale and the grid now, so I can draw a rectangle, set it to have 100 x 100 cm and it will appear on my A4 page as 5cm x 5 cm rectangle (because I’ve used 1:20 scale… We draw, we print and WOOOO It works like a charm :slight_smile:

But I want to show it to my customer, so she needs to be able to see that the rectangle is 100cm x 100cm…

So we use DIMENSION tool to measure it. So we set units to Centimeters again, fractions to 1.XX which means that we will see very precisely all the needed measures. And we set the offset to 2mm which is simply how far the dimensions are drawn from the dimension line. We set the font
(the lowest setting is 8pt but You can use 4pt by manually typing the size in the field)

And now we can draw a dimensions using “d” tool and they will beautifully appear on the printed document.

This also works like a charm… Right?

OK, but now I would like to see the exact size on my screen and this is how I understand “ACTUAL SIZE” tool…

So I press the “actual size”, zoom changes and what?

It should be obvious that I should see the 100cm x 100cm rectangle on my screen which can be measured by aliner to exactly 5 x 5cm right? Or simply to be able to see the actual A4 size on my screen…

BUT THIS DOESN’T WORK! The rectangle is 4,15 x 4,15… I have 19’’ 1280x1024 monitor.

So I need to change the scale of “ACTUAL SIZE” tool! And there is no way to do it! Or I don’t know this way… Do You know it? Nick, what You say? How to fit it?

Obviously every screen is different, and we use 19’‘, 24’’ 5:4 4:3 16:9 etc proportions, so it should be adjustable… Or I should have an option to manually set the viewing scale. I would recalculate what I need and set the ACTUAL SIZE tool scale by 120% and it would show me my 100cm box as 5cm real dimension on the screen…

(As I have written in the far beginning I can change the ruller scale and the screen corresponds with the drawn dimensions, but the printed document is no more adequate so this in not the solution…)

SOME ANSWERS:

I have no idea how or why this works! Reducing the scale >to 70% in Page Setup should reduce the printed size, but it >prints at 100%…

You have to set Your Page setup corresponding with media You print on. Usually A4 page will do a job.

I’m not sure what you mean by 1:20 scale. If you mean >1/20th actual size, just scale it to 5% and print at 100%.

I don’t want to recalculate things all the time… I want to draw from scratch in a set scale. But I’m sure that now You get the idea…

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4

Hi,

I think the actual size button simply means that the drawing is displayed at 100%, not enlarged or reduced. Your 1:20 scale drawing is still 1:20 scale. Actual size does not change the drawing, only the way it is viewed.

Dave M

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5

Hi Dave,

Exactly! Actual size affects just the way my drawing is viewed…
This is very good…

But I can’t see any sense in duplicating this same option (I can check this “100% zoom” in the zoom menu).
I see it this way that “actual size” means that I can see my drawing in exact size on my screen. I’d love to be able to use it this way. But it must be possible to set it up manually (so everyone could set their own zoom setting to correspond with their LCD screen.

Anyway it DOES NOT WORK this way. I find myself asking this loud “WHY?” :wink:

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