Hello,

I've been trying for two days (seriously!) to figure out how to print a pdf to scale. Here's the original....
http://zaphaudio.com/WaveguideTMM-profile.pdf
...and it prints out at roughly 80 percent on my printer.

A helpful fellow on another forum took the file, corrected it, sent the corrected verion via the forum thread as an attachment, and it printed out perfectly on my printer.
Unfortunately he was unable to describe exactly how he accomplished this other than to say he used a "common" vector graphics/editing program.
I went looking for such a program and first downloaded dia. But dia does not recognize pdf files.
Then I downloaded inkscape. The pdf opened just fine and everything looks very promising. But I'm a bit lost.

I guess what I'm looking for is some way to, for instance, click on one side of that 39mm dimension at the throat of the cone described in the above pdf, drag to the other side and click again, and then input the dimension "39mm" somewhere to reset the scale of the diagram. In some way that that the print gets sent to the printer in correct dimension.

Thank you very much for the assistance on this forum
sincerely,
brad

Please, please, please, please help me.

I've posted this question to seven forums. Three computer advice forums. The official Adobe forum. PlanetPDF forum. Two graphics design forums.

No person has yet been able to advise me on this.

I just want to print a pdf so that the image that comes out is in scale.
http://zaphaudio.com/WaveguideTMM-profile.pdf

How is it possible that this is such an odd request? This would seem to be one of the most fundamental needs of printing? What is going on?

I'll just keep bumping this until someone responds, I get kicked off the forum, or I put a pistol in my mouth.
Which ever comes first.

Number one hint for you, my friend, and for EVERYONE posting a problem with printing:
PLEASE tell us what platform you are using and which version of Inkscape you are on. Printing issues vary greatly from Windows to Mac to Linux. Some folks have experience with all three, but I am guessing that most responders here only know one.
I am looking at your file on a Windows XP pc and Inkscape 47.

I loaded it into the Gimp. Set the measurements to mm. Used the measure tool to measure the "39mm" section. That reads off as 27.2 mm. So, I need to scale the document by 39/27.2 = 1.43. It will then print correctly. Or, I can set the print size width to be 8.5*1.4 inches, for the same result.

It'd be more fiddly to do in Inkscape.

It would have been better if the document creator had done it right in the first place.



Anyway, that's how to do it. I'm a believer in telling, rather than doing, so I'll leave the rest to you.