Official Luthiers Forum!

i designed a guitar using G thang and then exported the file to rhino CAD as a .dxf file. im having a hard time finding someone to print it out to the proper scale. no luck at kinkos. no luck with the CAD guy at work. he got it close, but not close enough for me. how do you guys print reliably from rhino and other CAD software?

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sweat the small stuff.

Look for a place that specializes in architectural/construction documents, "reprographics" is probably a good search term. Other than that, you just have to make sure you're not scaling your print to fit the page or anything like that. I don't know anything about Rhino specifically as I use Autocad.

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

In a pinch you can print from Sketchup, but the process can be hit or miss and involves taping individual pieces of drawing together. Maybe try searching for drafting printing as well. You could also send the file to a cnc guy and have him cut it out of hardboard or plexi.

Bob

I haven't messed with rhino much but, what I do when I need a big print is export to PDF with whatever size paper I need and upload it to Kinko's with directions that it must be 1:1 scale. I always put a control marks in there to measure in the x and y axis to make sure it's indeed 1:1 (usually some tick marks about 10cm apart).

The key is to specify that you must have 1:1 and then make sure you specify 1:1 when you export the PDF. If when you pick it up it's not 1:1, refuse to pay until it is.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

well, i finally got a print that is relatively close. within about .030" or so. not too bad.

andy, how do you export to .pdf from rhino? i cant find .pdf as an option in the drop down menu of file types.

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sweat the small stuff.

As I mentioned, I don't use rhino much. I've only played with it a little bit but, if it doesn't have a PDF feature built in, there are free software packages that let you trick the software into thinking it's sending to a printer but the software intercepts and creates a PDF.

Cutepdf at http://www.cutepdf.com is the one I used to use. You'll want to do a test run or two to make sure it's coming out 1:1 though.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

that worked, andy! at least creating the pdf did anyway. thanks!

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sweat the small stuff.

+1 on PDF printers

They're also super useful for getting off of paper permanently; I pretty much only print to PDF now for records unless it's a mail-in form or something (redundant backup, of course!).

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services