How do I print to scale?

Sometimes, instead of printing what you see on your screen and fit on a sheet of paper, you may need to print your floor plan drawing to a precise architectural scale.

The scale is the number of feet/inches or meters that one inch on your computer monitor or your printer represents in the “real world”. If you say, “I want 1 inch on my computer monitor or printer to translate into 10 feet”, you are basically describing the precise scale that you want for drawing to appear on your monitor/printer. You actually can, in fact, zoom to a precise scale, if you want to.

If you adjusted the scale of your drawing so that “one inch on the screen represents 10 feet” and hit the Print button, then you can be assured that one inch on your paper would represent exactly 10 feet in the “real world”.

So, you will first want to print the test page. To print a test page, click the Test print button and wait for your printer to print the test page. The test page will have some instructions on it. It will also have a line that is approximately one inch long drawn on it. Measure the actual distance of the line with the ruler. If the line is less than an inch, you will want to increase the “dots per inch” in the Printer DPI box.

If the line is actually greater than an inch, then you will want to decrease the “dots per inch” in the Printer DPI box. For example, let us say that the line was actually only half an inch. In that case, we would probably want to double the size of the “dots per inch” in the Printer DPI box. After a few test pages, you should be able to exactly match up the line drawn on the test page with one inch on you ruler. You are now ready to print your drawing to scale. Again, just type in the precise scale for your drawing, and hit the Print button.

To summarize, print-to-scale means printing the floor plan at its actual dimensions without resizing it. This is crucial where precise measurements are essential. Always ensure the correct settings in your print dialog to maintain the accuracy of the dimensions.