How to print a pdf template to scale?

[frascati]

WaveguideTMM-profile.pdf

I just redrew it using the dimensions there. But for the future. How is it possible to print a pdf to exact scale? I asked at a couple of "computing" forums and was told again and again that you must print, measure, resize, print, measure, resize, etc, to get it right. That seems pretty crude. I can't believe that when someone sends you a pdf of a gasket, for instance, with inch and mm scales on the page, that Adobe has not made it easier for you to scale it properly. Did I just say can't believe that?

Some years ago I was filling out numerous law school applications. I got so pissed at Adobe for dumbing out the utility to fill in and save information on forms unless you poneyed up for their expensive editing tools that I swore i'd boycot them in the future where I could. Adobe ingratiates itself with governments, schools, and other public institutions, and then extorts the public users of the forms generated in order to utilized VERY BASIC features. I discovered PDFXchange viewer and that was solved. It even lets you use your trackpad to sign documents. Very cool. Screw Adobe. Rant over.

Please tell me they didn't dumb out this ability as well? (i think i already know the answer). I have not figured out if it's possible in PDFXchange. I've tried, but I'm not really that good at this stuff. But shouldn't even such idiots as myself be able to print a properly scaled document?

Another poster did in fact post a corrected pdf based on Zaph's that went through my printer PERFECTLY. When I asked how he accomplished this he responded....

Hi!

1. Import *.pdf in any normal vector graphic application

2. Scale (specify precisely dimensions).

Or make any other manipulations with vector objects

3. Export to pdf (if necessary)

I tried this in a program called dia. It would not import pdf. I converted to png and opened it and still could not figure out what to do. I tried opening the file in Sketchup. Sketchup wouldn't budge on it. Sketchup advised me that the file was locked. Its the same file that the poster above used successfully.

Any help?

[geno742]

Most cad programs have the ability to exactly set the scale of the drawing. The drawing is then sent to the printer but in this case the "printer" is a pdf writing program like "cute pdf," a free utility. Once the drawing file has been converted into a pdf file, anyone can open it and it will print out exactly as drawn unless it is deliberately changed by resetting the printer itself.

[frascati]

I printed the link unaltered. It came out about 80percent of original.

Can I adjust this with cutepdf?

[frascati]

I downloaded cute pdf. I could not get it to do this. I also puts an enormous watermark across the diagram.

Can someone advise me on this before I have no hair left on my head?

[Dennis H]

This should get you close. It's a cropped screenshot. Save the .gif to your HD and open it in MS Paint. Go to page setup and set the margins and scaling like the other pic. It should print 6.5" wide.

Edit: if necessary, adjust the margins and try again.

[geno742]

I printed the link unaltered. It came out about 80percent of original.

Can I adjust this with cutepdf?

Ok maybe a misunderstanding about how pdf scale is set. The originator of the pdf file determines how it is printed out. If you set it to fit the page, then no scale is set, just a convenient size. That is not what you want in this case when trying to get scaled patterns.
Mostly, at least in my business, the files are printed out at 1:1 size. If you have a large pattern, then you will get multiple 8 1/2 x 11 pages to be taped together.

[frascati]

I realize that few people have many machine tools, but I'll mention this just in case anyone is interested.

I fabbed a very quick and dirty (but accurate) router bit out of angle iron. I've got a lathe, but I actually thought this approach might be easier, give better repeatable accuracy, and, well, be interesting to try.




Just standard angle iron "wings" cut with the waveguide profile, tig welded onto a length of 1/2 inch rod. Welded one side - mounted it in the drill press - put the negative profile from the scrap I just cut out in a clamp to to set the exact height and angle of the wing - rotated the bit 180 degrees - set up the other wing against the clamped profile - and then tigged that on. Perfect. Got the edge red hot and oil quenched it. I had no idea if this would actually work in MDF so I didn't want to get too pretty with it.

The whole idea here was to be able to cut a waveguide into any baffle with just a drill press. I stacked two 3/4 inch scrap of mdf and drilled a 1/2 inch guide hole through. I set up the fabbed bit so it was partly guided into the hole and clamped the mdf. About 700 rpm. I was worried that it would either take a very long time, or that the steel would dull very quickly. But I was very pleasantly surprised. It did a fantastic job and the edge showed no dulling from one pass.

Now I can get started on this project in earnest.

[TacoD]

Wow that is really nice, now you can make wave guides and sell them to all HTGuide forum members

[Bear]

Wow that is really nice, now you can make wave guides and sell them to all HTGuide forum members

Have PayPal, will travel! :T Very, very nice work. ;x(

[evilskillit]

Wow that is awesome. If you can pull this together I'm sure lots of people would buy waveguides from you for projects since they will probably be able to just screw the tweeters directly into the back of the things instead of having to come up with convoluted mounting methods to get the things to interface together. As long as I can afford it I know I will.

[frascati]

Well I guess my quest has dead ended. It would appear that unless one is willing to purchase Adobe editing tools, there is no way to scale a pdf drawing/diagram without the hassle of print, measure, scale, print, measure, scale. And I'm beginning to doubt that even those programs are much real use. I've tried three different graphics programs now. dia, sketchup, and inkscape, and three pdf viewers, Adobe, pdfxchange, and finally irfanview.

Irfanview looked really promising and took a bit of time to download and install all of the plugins, but in the end it only allowed me to adjust the actual size of the entire image, exactly the same rudimentary nonsense that MS Paint does. The entire image, in either axis, including accompanying labeling, is seldom a useful reference for scaling. that still requires print, measure, adjust, print, measure. No image I've ever come across has ever actually stated "for the purpose of scaling this complete image is 64cm from left to right edge, including text and extraneous content". Some means of scaling from selected point to point on any image is necessary for any real accuracy.

That I can't find a program that simply allows me to click, drag, click again, and enter cm, meters, inches, or feet in a box, save, and then send to printer just makes me genuinely despair. A little utility like that would entirely obviate the requirement to support specific formats. It would work with everything... pdf, jpeg, png, html, etc. For my needs, I quite sincerely would not ever use 99 percent of a CAD or expensive editing utility. That I'd have to pay large sums for and then negotiate a learning curve on some CAD program that would eat up another good chunk of my harddrive just to accomplish this undeniably small and fundamental little jump through a hoop just makes me want to cry.

I posted the query to no less than seven sites now, including Adobe's support site, and been met with complete silence. I searched "scale print" on that site and there are a dozen similar requests in just the last year and the response is either nonexistant or the same old, "buy adobe x, y, or z". And I'm beginning to think that none of those either would perform the function as I described it above. Might as well just fart around with MS Paint and do it caveman style. God, I'm in one of those "we sent a man to the moon forty years ago" dark moods.

[JonMarsh]

Vector drawing and CAD packages give you a lot of control over scaling to a page when printing. Standard programs don't.

The cheapest program I know to do a good job with this would be ViaCAD; (basic 2D/3D version is less than $99) it's cross platform, works on Mac or PC, and allows entering a high precision page scaling ratio. For one to one on an accurate printer, should be fine; it reports the printer page size in detail, also.

This was written by the folks who came over from Concepts Unlimited CAD (used that program for years because it's dual platform); they were bought out by PunchCAD and work for them, now. Shark is their high end product (Ardent design with that).

http://www.punchcad.com/products/viacad2d3d.htm

Below is a link to the PC version for about $55.

http://www.amazon.com/Punch-ViaCAD-2D-3D-V6/dp/B0019RJ202/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1267285827&sr=8-1

[evilskillit]

Well I really want to see this get some traction. Do you have any experience with CAD? I think AutoDesk offers a free version of Autocad (not sure) and there is an open source free alternative called Doublecad. You should be able to import them into a cad program, convert to a DWF and then you shouldn't have any problems plotting them to a scale. (Truely spoken like someone who has never done this but works with engineers who say it should be easy).

I'll pick the brains of the engineers at work on Monday, but I have a feeling that is what you'll end up needing to do.

[jkrutke]

If it helps, I can post the profile in dxf format. That imports into almost anything.

[JonMarsh]

If it helps, I can post the profile in dxf format. That imports into almost anything.

That would be cool- it imports to ViaCAD and Shark. Of course, they can read .DWG, too.

[frascati]

It's not really a problem with this file for me. I've managed with it just fine. Anything is possible of course with a little determination. It's just that about once or twice a year for the past ten years I find myself needing to do this exact thing and pulling hair because it's not easily done.

I know just enough about computers to get myself in trouble with my expectations. Any minor design work I need to do is more than provided for with Sketchup. Learning another program for this single feature is not practical for me. It just seems intuitively that click point to point rescaling ANY image. pdf, jpeg, png, no matter, in order to print it exactly as needed would be a utilty that many many people would be interested in. For downloaded images of gaskets, printed circuit diagrams, templates, etc, etc. Alt click x, click y, put mm, cm, inch, whatever in a dialog box, save, print. All good.

I often find myself asking for something that I think must be as common as a phillips head screwdriver only to be astonished that noone has heard of it, or recommends checking with NASA for one. I know it's just my own misapprehension of the way the world works, but I just keep beating my head against that wall anyway.

[Dennis H]

Huh? Did you miss my post above. Load the gif I posted in MS paint and print it with the margins and (auto) scaling shown. I just tried it and it came out 6.5" wide on the first try with my printer.

Edit: I did the cropping in Paintshop Pro so I didn't give instructions about how to do that. But I checked MS Photo Editor and it will do the whole works. Zoom the page in Acrobat Reader until the waveguide fills most of the screen. Alt-PrintScreen copies the screen to the clipboard. Edit - Paste as new image in Photo Editor. Use the rectangular selection tool to outline where you want it to crop (the waveguide edges.) Then Image - Crop. Go to Print and tell it how wide you want it in inches. Simple.

[jkrutke]

Here's the profile in DXF if it helps anyone. It was measured with a mechanical needle gauge so it's pretty accurate.

[Bear]

Visio is good if you are used to MS Office products, though it is 2D only. There is a freeware version of an old CAD tool out there, IntelliCAD Classic, but I haven't ever gotten around to installing it.

[frascati]

I got a little impatient to practice with this bit and set my eye on my 'beater' workshop speakers hanging from the floor joists. Hmmm. Victims.

Cut a couple of new MDF baffles. Woofer recess and hole with trim router and just glued the cutout scrap circle behind the tweeter for WG depth. 1/2 inch roundover with the trim router. Did the WG on the drill press. Afterward I cutout a recess from behind for the tweeter faceplate using a router bit until the hole was precisely the right size for the 3/4 inch tweeter.

The bit I fabbed has extended profile beyond Zaph's template. I tried a few french curve stencils on the profile until one nearly matched and then extended the throat line with it. That's probably very close to the original WG and with this extension I have more range for different sized tweeters. The throat therefore may be a little deeper than is optimal when using a smaller dome, but better than nothing. An ideal bit for this WG profile would probably be something that maintained the the taper profile of the throat regardless of opening size since it has proven to be well matched to domes according to Zaph and JonM. That would have required something much more complicated that widened and narrowed both wings with a screw adjustment. Beyond my tooling skills. This willl have to do and is actually only a tiny bit off. I probably wont use it on any other 3/4 tweeters in any case.

These ancient speakers have a Vifa dome and a no name 6.5 inch poly woofer. I noticed that the glue on the dust caps was coming undone (poly don't like glue) so I just took 'em off and made a couple of oak dowel phase plugs to replace them.

I'd never even opened these before (got them at a thrift store years ago). With the WG they seemed comparatively 'shouty'. All that had been on the tweeter was a cap and 2ohm sandcast resistor in series. I removed the 2ohm and replaced it with a 3.2ohm in series and 12ohm parallel. Better. I really don't own any measuring tools yet beyond a radio shack SPL meter. These aren't really worth too much more effort than this anyway.



Listening to some of my favorite "working on a project" music I'm pretty impressed with even this very, very rudimentary application. Even IF some of that is imagined. The WG just looks so cool. And was able to get a little practice in with the new tool.

You can see my wire nut "thimble" connectors on the back. My favorite speaker terminals are none at all.

[JonMarsh]

Here's the profile in DXF if it helps anyone. It was measured with a mechanical needle gauge so it's pretty accurate.

Thanks, John! May not need it soon, but I like having it on my hard drive...

[frascati]

I'm going to refab this in tool steel with even better accuracy using John's DFX file (thank you John). It's as easy to make two as one so I was considering the possibility of making an extra and then posting it off to someone who might want to use it for any of the designs that incorporate the MCM wave guide. It will fit the smallest US Mail prepaid box for 4.95 anywhere in the continental U.S (i already checked). I'd pay the postage and the next guy would just 'pay it forward' for the next person who asked for it. The only limiting criteria being, of course, that you have access to a drill press, and that its 'throat depth', the distance from the center of the spindle to the column, be sufficient to drill into the middle of your project baffle. Most medium sized drill presses will handle the the projects I've seen so far using waveguides. I'm guessing that there are no more than about 10 persons out there who might want to get in line for this.

Realistically, it will probably never find it's way back to me. That's ok. It's not that big a deal to make. The likelihood, no matter how good people are, that one link in the chain will eventually be neglectful or selfish and fail to pass it on is part of life. I think I've even been that 'idiot' before myself, so that's cool. But if there is any interest out there in attempting something like this, let me know here or by PM.

[HokieJoe]

That baffle looks really nice frascati.

[evilskillit]

How hard are they to make. If someone wanted to buy one how much would you need to make it worth your time? There may be some interest.

[frascati]

I don't have a mill or other precision tooling. Everything is by hand and eye. So two is as easy as one, but three and more wouldn't be something I'd want to get into. I"m probably overestimating interest in this at even 10 people I guess.

[evilskillit]

I don't have a mill or other precision tooling. Everything is by hand and eye. So two is as easy as one, but three and more wouldn't be something I'd want to get into. I"m probably overestimating interest in this at even 10 people I guess.

Thats cool, just curious.

[Xmax BR]

Dears,

Inkscape (freeware http://www.inkscape.org) works with PDF natively. I imported, made a reference with accuracy at the base (39mm), gave a resize and was absolutely perfect in all dimensions and angles ...

The print was perfect!

Sorry for my bad english!

Tks,

Renato

[looneybomber]

The question was asked about how to resize a .PDF file, but instead of going through the trouble of doing that, what about designing your own wave guide? For example, sqrt X?

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