Wow - I’m sure if I worked at Staples and someone gave me a surfboard profile or whatever in a .pdf or a bitmap or however, and it was supposed to be 82.00" long mine would at least be 81.99" or thereabouts. They sucked up your job royally. You just have to know your scale-factor and trust the rest to the printer.
I just did a tape-job with the 110 lb. paper from - well, who else, but yup, Staples. So this profile looks pretty good - I’ll have to take a pic when I go back to the dungeon. I guess my paper cost a lot more than 10.00 (like 20.00?) but I get 250 sheets of it.
Glad to see there are diehard do-it-yourselfers killing themselves. Not so glad to see that Staples couldn’t pull that one off for you!
File > Properties > Document Properties. Make note of the PAGE SIZE LENGTH (the higher number). It does not matter if it’s not the same length as your board and the width of the document is not a factor here.
When you have it printed with the wide format printer at a Kinkos/Office depot etc., tell the person this PAGE SIZE (length) number is what they have to input when they open up a “Custom Print” window in order to preserve scaling when your file prints. Should cost about 6 or 7 bucks for a short board, make them understand it’s just a thin black line. HTH
I’ve been taking some shit for not using pro-grade techniques and tools, so I hesitate to share this one, but here it is:
I don’t think it’s necessary for the occasional board builder to buy new printers or spend $10 a side at Kinkos.
Print in Boardcad so that you have the grids for alignment. For a permanent full-length template at 8ft or less buy a 4x8 piece of mdf at Home Depot for $8 and have them cut it in 4ths. Take one and lightly mist it with spray adhesive and adhere the paper template to that to get your line. Cut it with a jigsaw and true the line - done. Spin templates could be built the same way.
For a 1-time use paper template take a full-length piece of 24" wide butcher paper, mist the outer edge on one side with spray adhesive (very lightly) and fold it lengthways with the adhesive side in so that everything sticks together. Mist one of the exposed sides with spray adhevsive and tack the template to it along the crease. Tape the edges and cut on the line. Unfold the butcher paper and you end up with a symmetrical full-length template. Lay the “inside” that was already misted directly to the blank and it will stick well enough to trace the template and you’re good to go. That process takes about 15 minutes from beginning to end; faster than making the trip to Kinkos.
Obviously this isn’t that way a pro would build their template library, but when compared to using a batten and bricks and fairing curves in template materials and such this is one way for a noob or other backyarder to easily get a clean and symmetrical 1-time use template without spending more than 50c for materials. It’s especially useful for doing full-size what-if models to see if you even like the shape prior to cutting it on a blank.
I just did this for a board I’m building for someone and gave them the template to “live” with for a couple days prior to me cutting the blank; to walk around on it and look at it in full size from different angles to see if there was anything they wanted to change. It makes it easier for them to envision what they’re getting - and making any changes - in advance of you cutting anything.
P.S. I do the templates for my veneers the same way. Lay a flat line of tape for my lapline, mist the deck with a little spray adhesive, lay the butcher paper down and trim to the tape line, retape the lapline and pull the entire template up in one piece - lay it on the deck-side of the veneer, trace and cut - done. Whether the finished board is symettrical or not the veneer will match the original lap line you laid down.
Cool post, and I noticed today that there are free tools for converting our bitmaps to pdf files - zamzar or something is one of them. Although in my case, I noticed that they didn’t put the right size image in. But that should be no problem - just scale it up to the right inches.
If I can step in here and make an offer. I have a large format printer. E-mail me your drawings in PDF format, and I’ll print them for you. $6.00 for the print (my cost for the paper and ink), and whatever the post costs to buy the envelope and mail it to you.
One bad thing about the CAD software is that it’s easier to draw an ugly curve with it. As much as I like using them to help me visualize what I’m doing and plan how to get there I think that making templates manually and using them is as much a part of the skillset as learning to use a sanding block.
One suggestion you might try is to go into the Control Panel and simply choose Letter 8 1/2 x 11 as your default driver paper-type settings. On my computer,
this becomes 0.125, 0.07, 0.125, .563 as my margins. In BoardCADland, this translates into .125 * 72 dpi = 9 pixels for the left, right and,
5.04 pixels and 40.536 pixels for the other two settings. In other words, to get pixels, just multiply the margins x 72. So we can think of either pixels or
inches this way. So anyway, now that you’ve chosen Letter paper and left the defaults for BoardCAD’s mPaper and mPageFormat and all that
junk to barf on, it’ll go fine. But the printer’s driver may not really handle all these settings correctly - should be easy to fix though - gte better
driver if the printer can handle this, or get a different printer. I’m not sure if we can PUSH a printer to do things it’s not supposed to do. I don’t
know much about printers unfortunately.
I mention 72 dpi because if you choose slightly different numbers from mine, you MIGHT get a perfectly even number of pixels for your printable
area. I guess mine is good enough but no absolutely perfect.
But at least it works on a basic letter - but you have to use the old paper cutter or else origami it somehow so they line up - but at least they line up
if you choose Letter paper and you actually have letter paper.
But as of now, you can’t really choose 0 for your margins - that dream setting. This is NOT a fault of BoardCAD - I just confirmed that BoardCAD
sets all the parameters correctly - the imageable size height/width are taken from the driver correctly. So it’s just that some printers and/or drivers
cannot handle the task. I suspect that it’s the driver and that many printers WOULD be able to handle the task. One way to test this is to install
a banner or poster printer program on your computer and see if THAT program can handle the task. But in fact, it’s NOT the fault of BoardCAD.
It’s the printer or the driver - sorry, if I said or Implied otherwise at some point. The BoardCAD code is correct enough that 0 for all 4 margins
should print out ok - perhaps it DOES on the Lexmark 2670. Interesting. In fact, the BoardCAD code will look at the 0 margins and then
correctly set the image in height/width to 792 pixels x 612 pixels and this is 11" x 8 1/2" exactly. Or 27.94 cm x 21.59 cm, however you want
to look at it. It tracks things from the dialog closing just fine. The imageable area is 792 pixels x 612 pixels as it should be for a borderless print.
But when my HP 6210 prints, it does it borderless, but the pieces of the profile are INCORRECT - it’s almost crazy when you see what the printer
does despite being given the correct instructions by BoardCAD!? Nuts it is. I can’t wait to buy another printer or install a good banner program.
My first poster program did NOT work correctly.
By the way BoardCAD itself, chooses “on-the-fly” whether or not you need landscape (in it’s call to getPageFormat). Irregardless of what you choose, BoardCAD’s software makes a decision for you whether or not to use portrait or landscape. So just leave your Control Panel driver settings to Portrait if you want - so other apps you have will still be normal. Otherwise you will have to change this on the fly all the time.
If you have another kind of paper size/type you are printing on, I’ll have to try that - I’ve always used 8 1/2 x 11 so far.
This might help?
PS My page height and width internal to BoardCAD is as follows (set your to these):
pg height = 26.332
pg width = 20.955
Divide these by 2.54 cm if you’re American, if you’re British, who knows?
It’s not that I don’t respect gdaddy and surfding’s ways of doing things. If you can hand-shape a board and work out all the curve-making technology and also use the power tools to shape the actual foam, then you’ve got some real skill. The hardest part for me is to actually take a power planer and symmetrically shape the foam.
But I am getting a tiny bit better now that I’m on my second board ever. I can now visualize working from the center-stringer out to the rail and back. And my planer sits nicer each time I move it since now I let it lean back in it’s normal position. Now I get nice clean 1/16" or whatever cuts. So I’m getting there. But not to be too hard on myself. I had to take a piece of foam that’s a close-tolerance rockered for head-high power-surf down to an easier, gentler rockered board for chest-high surf. This challenged me - in the future, I will get rockers closer to my ballpark.
But to those of you have mastered it years ago, you’re worth your weight in gold! I think your way is more courageous - and it’s bound to work!
Here’s a strange one - now that I’ve done all these tests and changed the printer settings to do them, my profile printouts are no longer margined at 1/8" left to right even though the settings are the same as before. Now the margins are much larger. Now I have to troubleshoot that problem! So far I have no idea what has happened. The printer works fine. So it’s some setting. I just don’t know which one. ??
How silly of me - of course I have to “scare” the printer dialog into changing the settings away from that value - then setting that back - that works better, now
7 of the 8 pages are correct. Ok, here little page 8, come on get in the f-ing margin. No, no, it’s a funhouse, a f-in ghoul is about to jump out and scare the sh-t out of me.
I decided to set ALL 4 margins - left, right, top, and bottom to 0.125" - now the printouts are correct. Perhaps I had not realized that they were all set to that before. Not sure about this. But at least I’ve recovered my OLD way of printing where I use my paper-cutter. This is fine until I buy another printer.
Just thought I’d give an update to the list of printers I’ve tested. I’ve tested an Epson, and some HP’s (the HP can copy borderless but it cannot print borderless). However,
I recently bought a Canon ip7220 and it CAN in fact do borderless printing. So I will try a BoardCAD printout some time and let everyone know how it goes. I have
to install BoardCAD on the machine that the printer is on - it’s one of my backup machines. I’ve already made perfect borderless prints so I will look foward to
trying some BoardCAD printouts. It’s a very inexpensive printer. I got mine from B&H photo in NYC - and I ordered 5 extra ink cartridges and I got the 3 year
maintenance plan for 12.95 and I bought a USB cable and belkin power-strip and a pack of Bazooka chewing gum. It came out to 172.00. He shipped it UPS
for only 7.95 even though it was a 13.00 next day shipment. The printer is easy to set up. It takes some getting used to the Image Garden image-handling software. You have
to set it to Extension = none (at least the way I printed it out). And the Border was selecting on the screen. But it did a perfect job. So we might have found
a really cheap printer that will do an outline or profile without the margin troubles. So try out Image Garden. I’ve only printed out 3 or 4 borderless so far so I look
forward to installing BoardCAD on that machine. I’ll post what happens. Enjoy!
PS I have a feeling that it might fail to do a banner-style print as Image Garden may not be incorporated into BoardCAD in a positive way. It might get
tricky so I’m not optimistic.
November 10, 2013 update to “not optimistic”:
Well, I have BoardCAD up and running with vers 2.1 on the machine with the Canon ip7220 printer. In fact, the Canon driver is completely integrated
into BoardCAD when you go to print. I had feared that only Canon’s Image Garden could do a borderless print with Extension set to 0. But actually, even
BoardCAD can do a borderless print and with 0 extension. You just have to adjust the little extension slider on the right of one of the print panes - there
are like 4 print panes. I’ll have to update with a pic of the first 2 pages of the outline. The outlines from the first two papers DO line up perfectly - so there
is now a LOT of hope that I won’t need my paper-cutter approach for outlines and/or profiles. I just haven’t printed all 10 pages yet but I will post a pic
when I can grab my camera tomorrow - the outlines and the 8 1/2 x 11" sheets all line up perfectly. I will have to tweak the grid code some some time -
I said no grid but it printed a grid anyway - no big deal. So THERE IS HOPE FOR PEOPLE WITHOUT PAPER-CUTTERS, a cheap printer by Canon
