Do you want to know how to prepare foam board airplane plans for printing the easy way? Here's a quick tutorial!
Sometimes you might need to 'tile' plans into printable sections of A4 paper. If you want to know how to do this, keep on reading y'all!
Step 1 - Download the tiling software
For this example, we'll use this foam board Vampire model plan to work on. It's full size so we'll need to split it into printable sheets of A4.
Good job we have these handy pieces of software available for free download!
Mac OS: http://www.splitprint.com
Windows: http://www.noliturbare.com/pdf-tools/pdf-tiler
For this tutorial, we'll be working with the Mac SplitPrint software, but the methodology is the same for both meaning you shouldn't have any problems. Here's what the Split Print application looks like when you open it for the first time.
Importing the plans
You'll need to drop your plans into the software. You can simply drag and drop them in with SplitPrint.
Scaling
Next, you'll next need to go into 'Document Settings' where you can make sure that the scale is set to 100%. After clicking 'done', the software should automatically adjust the number of pages to a number that fits the full sized plan.
After this, you could go ahead and print the plan - but here's one extra helpful tip. To help align the paper once you've printed the plan, you can add borders and guides to each sheet. On the top bar, click on the drop menu that says 'None' and the hit the 'Align' option.
Okay, now it's time to print! Hit that printer icon or select 'print' from the file menu. Make sure you haven't got any scaling presets selected here - you always want to be printing at 100%. Some plans have a reference measurement ruler included on them so you can double check after printing.
When you've got your plans printed in A4 sheets, all that you'll have to do is tape them together and cut out each shape just like when scratch building with any of our Flite Test tiled plans.
Let us know if you have any questions or need a hand with configuring your tiler. Happy scratch building!
Article by James Whomsley
Editor of FliteTest.com
Contact: james@flitetest.com
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/projectairaviation
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When you print a PDF the printer dialog gives you options to print tiled, and in any scaled size you choose . It also allows you to select margin sizes and to have the tile edges marked with reference lines .
Check to see if your page lays out better in portrait or landscape .
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