OpenSCAD is a really useful tool! It’s free and open source and available on most PC platforms. To split it into separate smaller parts, you can use difference and intersection with a rectangular prism shape. Note: this will generate the STL for the full size plate. I tried to attach it here but the forum didn’t like the file type. Paste that into the OpenSCAD editor, press F5 to see the model rendered, F6 to compile it, then File/Export/Export as STL… to save the STL file. Linear_extrude(height = 4, center = false, convexity = 1) The process is very simple but there are a couple of details that you need to be aware of.L. Here is the code to generate a 4mm thick YZ Plate: This video is about drawing and printing to scale using LibreCAD. You can do the same 2D measurements of the DXF file, but if you google for tutorials for onshape or fusion, you’re going to find a lot of people doing 3D.Īnother way to do this without fusion 360 is with OpenSCAD (free CAD programming language). But newer CAD programs like fusion360, onshape, solidworks they all have a way to make a 2D sketch, and then you extrude 2D shapes to make 3D objects, which is really going to serve you a lot more in the long run. You might really like librecad (it is like autocad from the 90s, all 2D). Those are going to be more accurate than printing and measuring from a print. It is free, and you can open it, and then there are measurement tools you can use to measure from one side to another, or the angle between two lines, or the radius of a corner, or the diameter of a hole. One option for just this one thing is to use librecad. Setting the scale of a drawing is the easy part, drawings should be created full-scale (1:1) The zooming abilities of LibreCAD will make the whole drawing. Most CAD programs can open DXF in a sketch (because a lot of them are focused on 3D, not 2D). The DXF contains 2D information only, and it knows the coordinates of a hole, and the size of it, etc. The command line version incorporates a command line tool from QCAD called dxf2pdf.DXFs are unitless, but the ones Ryan makes are in mm. There are two ways to use LC, via the GUI or command line interfaces.īasically you go to the print preview, and set the scale to 1:1 and check that the part of the drawing you want is slid over the page area.įor multi-page prints with or without unprintable border areas on each page see: Perhaps in later versions of FC the libraries are loaded automatically. Then go to File -> Export and make sure your exporting to dxf, or dwg and you have the proper libraries for that option. You can hold down the control or command key to select several at once. First select one or more items in the FC tree view that you wish to export. The export function is built into the core of FC so you don't need to load a particular workbench to access it. In LC you should go here: Options -> Application Preferences -> Defaults Though I read that internelly it always uses mm. In FC you can go to: Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Units to check your settings. You could also export / import in dwg format if you have those librarys, (LibreDWG, or ODAFileConverter). This is because you'll probably export your 2D drawings in dxf files which are unit-less, meaning they don't contain any info on what units the drawing is in. Once you have LibreCAD, the first step is to set the units the same in both FreeCAD and LibreCAD (FC and LC). Measure scale: 500 m (scale) are 83.6 units in Librecad ('Dimension / horizontal') Solution 1: Rescale your measurements 1 unit (LC) 5.98 m (500 / 83.6) If you measure areas: 1 unit2 5.98 5. At the time of this post, I had to build it from source to get a usable version. Since LibreCAD is also open source, perhaps you could incorporate some of its code here if the Copylefts are compatible.įirst off, the needed functionality in LibreCAD is only available in versions 2.2.0 and later. I see from this thread that there is a feature request to Allow Selection of Print Area and Scale: issue #4413. I found that LibreCAD which was forked from QCAD version 2, is also open source, and has good support for setting the desired print scale, and tiling prints that span more than one page of a given size. I recently used it to check the outlines of my drawings of a plastic shell that I was copying before I tried to 3D print a new one. Along with the OP's use case, I've seen others put it to good use gluing the prints down on wood to mark where holes get drilled, or edges cut. Here is an alternative tool chain to print sketches and the like at 1 to 1 scale.
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