Having tried this once - it is something I will never repeat. I printed my old 8x12, skipping the blank pages for the hole in the middle, and taped them all together using the registration marks. rolled it up, carried it down to the layout, unrolled on top, and marked all the lines.
Never again. Huge waste of paper and time. On my last layout (did I actually build AND tear down a layout while you were gone?) I just started at a critical area where a curve and several turnouts came together. I printed it on a single sheet of paper in a scale that I could easily measure with a ruler (and I really ought to get an architect's scale, it would be even easier) and since my plan included the benchwork, I could measure from the edge to the first straight track. ANd from that track to the next, and so on. Then I could measure from an end and mark then point end of each turnout. Much like when you do mechanical drawing and extend the stright lines past where they stop, and then later erase what you don;t need - except I skipped the erasing part. I have a long metal straight edge that I used to cut foam as well as draw long straight lines. The curve I struck using a piece of wood supported by my camera tripod, with holes drilled the proper radius apart, one for the pencil, one for the tripod screw. I did this in only 3 places on the layout - if you look at the plan of that layout, the top right where I started, the left end of the yard, and then over by the liftout in front of the door. The rest I just filled in as I went - like the sidings along the bottom, when I got to about where I thought they should be, I put the turnout in (and also with using as few short filler pieces as possible).
While that SOUNDS like a lot of work, it was easier than the full size printout stuff. It took a LONG time to properly assemble all those sheets, just get one off halfway down a side and the whole thing ends up crooked. Then how do you transfer THROUGH the paper to the table? Remember this was foam topped, not plywood, and to show up on the foam you almost need something like a Sharpie, pencile, or carbon paper, that sort of thing just doesn;t make much of an impression. What I ended up doing was using a pounce wheel to poke through the paper and intot he foam, then I tracked over the now hole-filled lines on the paper with a sharpie, then removed the paper and ran the Sharpie directly over the holes with occasional Sharpie marks on the foam. Again, hugely time consuming, plus as I got further along and there were more holes in the paper, the whole thing became a huge pain to handle. And I still had to trace it on again after taking the paper away.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
RR_MelChip, if you have a blueprint service in your area most can print a 48” wide print on a plotter from a DXF or DWG extension.
Dude, I'm so far in the sticks I have to drive 30 minutes to get groceries. The nearest movie theater is 45 minutes, and there isn't a hobby shop within a 1000 miles that I know of.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
In the Print Dialog box, just put "1" in the Print scale field, then click to mark the different sheets you want to print before clicking the Print button.
Note that you can also change paper orientation, ignore page margins (if you want to tape the different sheets together without the need for cutting and adjusting the sheets, the "Print registration marks" option is also useful here), adjust origin and angle of the sheets (to save paper when you want to print only parts of the plan), so I'll just recommend that you try out the different settings and watch the grid change in the preview before clicking "Print".
I guess this is the right forum for this.
I've seen layouts where the track paths were printed and attached to the plywood in the right spots. I'm assuming I can do that in XtrackCAD, just because the people who designed it would have thought of it in 10+ years of working on it.
So, how do I print 1:1? Do I just select the track I want and hit the print button? Are there any tricks or caveates?