Trying to import a PDF

Community Support
1

I’m building something that comes with parts to cut out, the files are in PDF and when I import them into the GF, they seem super small and not to scale.

Article:

Here is the PDF:

Any ideas on this?

Thanks!

-Jason

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Welcome to the forum!

I almost always have to open a PDF in some design program or PDF editor to get the scaling correct. You never know how the original file has been saved and how the scaling gets set.

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Thank you for the reply, how do you know what scaling values to enter to make it correct? Is it stored somewhere in the PDF?

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I don’t know anything about PDF file formats and how they work. I just know that different programs save them with different values. Often it depends on the size of the page the file is put on. So if you can get the correct width and height into the page size of the file, it will scale correctly. In this case it is a 300 x 400 mm file.

Often these issues come into play because there is a metric/imperial file definition conflict. I put the GFUI into metric and uploaded it, but it still wasn’t scaled correctly.

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PDF’s from an unknown source can be raster information only as a PDF is a container file simular to svg. If it is raster then all you can do with it is engrave. You need vector information to cut or score.

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I´m surprised @Jules didn´t get this first.

I don´t know if this is what you intended.

I downloaded the file and opened in Adobe Illustrator

selected all, then in menu Object/Compound Path/Release
selected the outer rectangle and hit Delete
selected the rest of the design and grouped with Object/Group
clicked on Transform and scaled the X to 400 mm and Y to 300 mm
Created a new document with Glowforge dimensions 20 X 12 in.
The enclosed file is the result.
Hope this helps.

5mm_Acrylic_White_300mmx400mm reworked.svg.zip (27.6 KB)

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Got sidetracked reading some FB posts. (Fortunately looks like I wasn’t needed.) :wink:

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Your wisdom and your wit are indispensable in this forum @Jules and are always needed and appreciated.

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That’s incredibly sweet! (I question the accuracy, but sweet nonetheless.) :wink:

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Group hug and a chorus of Kumbaya :hugs:

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Let’s not…I hate that song. :rofl:

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Thanks for all the great help in this thread, everyone. @jcradford, were you able to get the results you were looking for by adjusting the dimensions in design software as @reynoso explained?

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Thank you so much for this, I had attempted to do the same thing in Inkscape but wasnt getting the results I needed. That was very kind of you to do that for me.

Tested today and it worked great, thank you so much for this!

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Excellent! I’m glad to hear that helped. I’m going to close this thread, but if you run into any other trouble please start a new thread. Alternatively, you can email us at support@glowforge.com. Happy printing!