Video Transcript
In this QCAD tutorial, we will print a drawing.
Example drawing: part_05.12.dxf
We will learn how to print a drawing to scale using the print preview.
We will also cover PDF export which is very similar to printing.
Once a drawing is finished, we usually want to print it or perhaps export it to a PDF file to share it with other people.
QCAD offers various methods for printing.
In this tutorial we show the most basic approach.
In a first example, we look at this drawing of a simple mechanical part.
The part has the right size to be printed in its actual size at a scale of 1:1.
We have already created a drawing border that also fits on the standard paper size of our printer.
To prepare our drawing for printing, we first switch to the print preview.
We can immediately see, that this drawing has not yet been set up for printing.
The page orientation is set to portrait instead of landscape and the drawing is not entirely on the page.
Before we attempt to adjust the drawing scale and position, we make sure that the page is set up as desired.
The white rectangle represents the paper we are printing on.
The blue borders on the paper indicate the intended margins between the paper border and the drawing.
We can check and adjust these preferences in the page settings for our drawing.
To access the page settings, we either click the button in the options toolbar or we open the "Drawing Preferences" from the "Edit" menu.
The page settings allow us to set the paper size, the page orientation and the margins.
For this drawing, we change the page orientation to landscape.
The paper size is currently set to A4.
If we are printing to a printer that uses a different paper format, we can adjust the paper size here.
The page margins are set to 10 millimeters, which will work fine for this drawing.
Note that in older versions of QCAD, the margins are accessible under the "Multi Pages" preference category instead of the "Page" category.
We can now use the auto fit button to automatically fit the drawing on our page.
Auto fit adjusts the drawing scale and position, so that all entities fit on the page with the margins we have defined in the page settings.
Note that we did not scale or move the entities of our drawing in any way.
Our drawing still has the same size and none of the measurements or coordinates of the drawing have changed.
All we did is to tell QCAD how we want to scale and position the drawing on the paper for printing.
Auto fit is sufficient when we simply want to print the whole drawing and don't worry about its scale on the printout at all.
For this example however, we want to print the drawing to scale.
We want to print the drawing border and everything inside of it.
We do not want to print the part that is located at the right, just outside of our drawing border.
To print a drawing to a given scale, we change the drawing scale in the options toolbar.
We can enter a scale factor of 1 to print our drawing in its real size.
Alternatively, we can enter the drawing scale in the format 1:1, meaning that one unit on paper corresponds to one unit in the model.
Next, we use the tool to move the paper position.
We can now move the paper using drag and drop.
Our drawing is now ready for printing.
We can click the printer icon to print our drawing.
This will present us with a printer dialog that allows us to select additional options such as the input tray to use, the number of copies and others.
The printer dialog appearance depends a lot on the operating system that is being used and the printer model but should be fairly straightforward.
We can also export the page we have set up for printing to a PDF file.
PDF files are often used to distribute drawings and make them accessible for a wider audience.
Not all drawings fit so conveniently on a paper like this example drawing.
A drawing might for example be too large to be printed in real size.
Example drawing: park.dxf
We can demonstrate this using the park layout plan previously featured in the tutorial about blocks.
This drawing, like most CAD drawings, has been created in real size.
The unit of this drawing is set to meters, so a distance of one unit equals one meter in the real world.
When we switch to the print preview, we can barely see the A4 paper as a tiny white dot near the drawing origin.
To fit the whole plan on a single page, it needs to be displayed at a smaller scale for printing.
For this example, we set the scale to 1:250.
In other words, we print the plan 250 times smaller than it is in the real world.
One centimeter on the paper will correspond to 250 centimeters or 2.5 meters in the real world.
To adjust the drawing position, we use the tool to automatically center the drawing on the page.
The plan is now centered on the page and scaled as desired.
However, we also want to insert a border for this drawing.
We have already prepared a drawing border in a separate block called "Border".
The border was constructed in paper measurements and is a bit smaller than an A4 paper.
When we insert the "Border" block, it is at first so much smaller than the plan that we cannot see it at all.
We need to scale the border up to fit our plan scale.
Since we have scaled our plan down by a factor of 250, we need to scale the border up by the same factor.
We can now place the border on the paper as desired.
As author of a drawing, we need to be aware from the start at what scale we want to print the drawing.
Not only the scale of the border but also the size of dimensions or text labels depend on the final drawing scale used for printing.
We can now print or export our drawing.
You should now be able to print a drawing using auto fit or print a drawing to scale using the print preview.
Be sure to practice this with your own installation.
Thank you for watching this QCAD tutorial.