Help with creating a template for A3

[Kiosk Keith]

Hi everyone.

I'm a new user to Freecad and I'm trying to create a template for A3 using Inkscape as suggested. Im using the tutorial found here.....

http://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.ph ... late_HowTo

The trouble is its based on an A4 template and I need the values for W & H and I can see no relation between the ones given for A4 for its finished size to allow me to change them to suit A3? I have included the text from the tutorial below and highlighted the part I refer to.

"Using the Horizontal and Vertical coordinates of selection settings, along with the settings for Width and Height of selection, we will place the border 10 units, (px) in from the document edges. Enter the following. For X enter 10, for Y enter 10, for W enter 259, and for H enter 196. You will see that this set the lower left corner of the rectangle drawn for the border 10 up and 10 over from the lower left corner of the page."

If anyone has any idea what these values should be for an A3 template I'd be very grateful.

Many thanks

OS: Windows 7
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.16.6706 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-16
Hash: f86a4e411ff7848dea98d7242f43b7774bee8fa0
Python version: 2.7.8
Qt version: 4.8.7
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 6.8.0.oce-0.17

Quick edit.


Having re read it I think its the paper size in mm less 20 in both directions. I'll give it a try.....

[triplus]

Hi @Kiosk Keith.

FreeCAD 0.16 has some outstanding issues (only fixed in FreeCAD 0.17 dev) with drawing template support. Therefore my suggestion would be to use A3 drawing template from the default set of drawing templates and use only 1 drawing page with the same template for each file. That is once you inserted the page and used A3 drawing template don't add another page with the same A3 drawing template.

If you will follow the above advice likely you will be able to avoid much of the caveats involved. If you plan to go down the custom drawing template path search and read the forum for reference. As there are issues involved and you will likely discover all of them in the process.

[wandererfan]

If you want 10mm border all around an A3 sheet, the border should measure 297 - (2*10) = 277 by 420 - (2*10) = 400. From an existing A3 template: "<!-- Working space 10 10 410 287 -->" so that is 400 x 277.

Code: Select all

   static const float paperSizes[][2] = {
        {210, 297}, // A4
        {176, 250}, // B5
        {215.9f, 279.4f}, // Letter
        {215.9f, 355.6f}, // Legal
        {190.5f, 254}, // Executive
        {841, 1189}, // A0
        {594, 841}, // A1
        {420, 594}, // A2
        {297, 420}, // A3
        {148, 210}, // A5
        {105, 148}, // A6
        {74, 105}, // A7
        {52, 74}, // A8
        {37, 52}, // A8
        {1000, 1414}, // B0
        {707, 1000}, // B1
        {31, 44}, // B10
        {500, 707}, // B2
        {353, 500}, // B3
        {250, 353}, // B4
        {125, 176}, // B6
        {88, 125}, // B7
        {62, 88}, // B8
        {33, 62}, // B9
        {163, 229}, // C5E
        {105, 241}, // US Common
        {110, 220}, // DLE
        {210, 330}, // Folio
        {431.8f, 279.4f}, // Ledger
        {279.4f, 431.8f} // Tabloid
    };

[francoislark]

I don't if it is the right place for comment, I too used the tutorial https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.p ... late_HowTo to create a custom template for US Ledge format, and noticed:

Differences (somehow misleading) in the definition of Border and Title block between InkScape and Freecad:
- Freecad uses X2 and X2a while Inkscape uses width of the rectangles
- Freecad uses Y2 and Inkscape uses height of the border as rectangle
- Freecad uses Y1a measured from top ot the sheet while Inkscape uses the distance from the bottom of the sheet.

After many attemps, I came to the conclusion that new created template will be fully functional if it is saved in */freecad/Mod/drawing/template directory and named according to a naming convention like:
X#_Lanscape_****.svg
or
X#_Lanscape_****.svg
where X is a character between A and Z (my guess), # is a digit and **** a word (the later and its leading _ is optional).
This naming will ensure that the new template appears in the drop-down list and if chosen, be inserted as a page.
I don't know if this is still relevant for newer releases, my configuration is:

OS: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.17.13541 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: releases/FreeCAD-0-17
Hash: 9948ee4f1570df9216862a79705afb367b2c6ffb
Python version: 2.7.15rc1
Qt version: 5.9.5
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: French/Canada (fr_CA)

[francoislark]

Sorry, the second pattern should read:
X#_Portrait_****.svg

I also noticed that I didn't have to switch from mm to px in the page setup. I did it first and ended with a useless tiny template. In my second attempt, I just rounded the dimension in mm to the next digit:
431.8 -> 432mm
279.4 -> 279mm
Inkscape didn't mess up the values as described in the tutorial.

[NormandC]

I too used the tutorial https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/index.p ... late_HowTo to create a custom template for US Ledge format

Salut François,

Are you aware that the Drawing workbench has been deprecated? Starting in v0.17, there is a new TechDraw Workbench that is not only actively maintained, it has much more features, including basic dimensioning.

To create templates for TechDraw, the procedure is slightly different, and detailed here: TechDraw_TemplateHowTo