Printing build plans and putting them together

[Striker2909]

So, I've followed these instructions over and over:

1. Open the PDF you want to print using Adobe Reader X.
2. Click the Print icon.
3. In the Print dialog box, click Poster.
4. Set Tile Scale to 100%.
5. Set Overlap to 0.005in.
6. Click Print.

However, I can never get the plans to match up. Is there a video showing how to print and assemble plans? How do you transfer them to the foam board? The speed build kits are great and I'd like to save some money too! Can someone explain the process to me? Thank you very much!

 

[BobK]

Did you cut the individual sheets at the provided cut marks? They are the little marks in the corners.

 

[RAM]

The plans should have registration marks on them to help you align. There will be overlap from sheet to sheet since the printer can't print all the way to the edges. Double check that you don't have any resizing selected in acrobat.

Pin transfer is my favorite new (old) way of transferring plans to the foam board.

Jeff Clark has the best video I've seen yet on how to do this.
You don't even need to draw a line like he does if you line up a ruler against the pins. (use the pins to align the straight edge and cut with an xacto.

 

[SHolman]

And there's today's episode!!! How's that for timing?

 

[Striker2909]

That's awesome! I put it in the survey as well. Spooky! ��

 

[MattTheNewbie]

I tried plans and I was able to print them right but it was a pain in the butt. Think I might not do plans ever again. Gonna take 6 weeks to even get the money to buy a ft tiny trainer without electronics. :,(

 

[TEAJR66]

When you are trying to put the plans together, do it on a big window or sliding glass door. Use the light shining through to line up the long straight edges end to end. You can also line up the cut marks.

 

[quimney]

I feel your pain... cutting and taping plans is no fun at all but there are a few things you can do ease the pain.

If you have access to a larger printer it can save you a lot of effort. I use a pen plotter to print the plans on poster board so there is no taping at all. Before I got the plotter (a goodwill find) I was printing on a 11x17 priinter and that saved a lot of time over 8.5x11.

Another thing you can do to minimize the cutting and taping is to import the full sized, untiled pdf into inkscape and then rearrange the pieces and print them one at a time. This way a lot of the smaller pieces require no taping at all and bigger parts like the wing can be done on fewer sheets. It uses more paper but there is a lot less taping.

 

[finnen]

Also, it is possible to glue papers together "in line" with a little overlap, set a custom paper size on the printer, and print two or three sheets in one go. There was a forum post or article about it here some time ago, but I can't find it. That makes it possible to print almost everything in one or two prints, with very little fiddling about.

Hmm...You can buy paper on rolls from ikea (for kids to paint on). You could cut that to width with a ruler, as wide as the printer will take, and print fairly large prints without needing to glue anything.

 

[hotwax]

If you do cardboard patterns, don't cut outside the lines, cut inside, then your parts will not be oversized.

 

[kacknor]

Sometimes a printer driver will determine the edges of the page differently. It's all supposed to be universal but... This means that you lose some information. It's enough to mismatch parts and leave gaps where lines should be, or have line disappear altogether. My Samsung laser printer (cheap) does this. I've been having some better luck with setting the overlap higher, say .015.

Also, use the preview box in Adobe. It can show you where the breaks are going to be and let you move things around in a program like InkScape so the breaks are predictable.

This makes it happen, but nothing I know makes it easy except taking the thing to a printer and let them do it full size.

JD