Help please?

[Jake 747 400]

Hey guys.
I have a CAD file for the 747-400 cockpit shell, kindly sent to me by Phil (Phil744), I want to use the drawing as a templete to cut out the ribs and spars to build the shell, usually I print it off on paper to scale and cut it out, use it as a template etc, but obviously I cant print print out an 11ft sheet of paper haha. Is there anyother way I can still do this acuratly?
Thanks,
Jake.

[fordgt40]

Jake

Do a search on the web for Poster Printing Programmes. They will print out large images on A4 sheets with registration lines for alignment

David

[Jake 747 400]

That sounds like a good plan, so if I understand correctly, the full drawing is printed on many A4 sheets and then you put them together like a puzzle to for the main part?
That sounds a good idea.
Thankyou.
Jake.

[capetonian]

Here's what you are looking for: PosterRazor (http://sourceforge.net/projects/posterazor/)

[Jake 747 400]

Hello again, the poster razor works, but I cant seem to get it on the right scale or size. It makes it smaller. See the software will only read a picture file, so if I export the drawing from AutoCAD 2010 to say a jpeg it doesnt work it changes the size. Is there anyway to do this but still keep the drawing on a 1:1 scale.
Thankyou.
Jake.

[Jake 747 400]

Is there any poster print software that will read DXF Files?
Jake.

[Perik]

Hello Jake

Do you have access to CorelDraw?

It's a nice poster option in Corel which I've used with
success for printout of the 767 MIP and DXF-import is usually OK.

[Jake 747 400]

I do belive we have it at college, I used it alot at school for parts of my sim on the cnc laser cutter/engraver.

I should be able to get access.
So with corel you can print large drawings on to many A4 sheets?

Thankyou
Jake.

[autocadplease]

If you can create a .pdf from the drawing, you can get Acrobat to tile the pages. The maximum size Acrobat can handle is 200 inches x 200 inches.

I have converted files for another member just to do this.

[phil744]

What about using a projector? beam the image onto the material you plan on cutting then trace round it, put a few reference measurments on the projected image, so long as you dont keystone or pin cussion the projected image that should be close enough?

[Perik]

Jake,


So with corel you can print large drawings on to many A4 sheets?


Corel will do the job. Go to Print Preview, Print Option then Layout.
There you'll see the Print Tiled pages. An example attached.

BTW - smart to rotate your object to optimize the number of pages.

Good luck!

[Jake 747 400]

It worked! I cant believe it!
For some reason the drawing was scaled down on the version of CAD I have.
The correct dimensions are 3465.87mm wide, 2488.2mm long and about 2048.5 tall I think, as Phil said in his thread on the 3D drawings he did.
On my CAD it put them to 346.587mm 248.82mm and 204.85mm, I checked that my units were not in centimeters and they were not, so all I did was scale the drawing up by 10 times and it was fine. I dont know why this happened. So then I saved a copy as a DXF file and opened it on Corel Draw. Tiled the drawing on print settings and walla it worked. I have some tinkering to do like setting over laps to align them correctly but other than that its great.

Also what it great is that the drawing is in layers so if I wanted, I could just look at the cross-sections or verticals, or even the windows. This makes it much easier as I can print of the cross-sections alone and make those then move onto the other parts.

Thanks again to all.
Regards to Phil for the excellent drawing ;)
Jake.