Would You Rely On This Comparison Site?

Hi Nigel Graham 2, I don't know what Brother you were looking at, but I have had a Brother A3 printer/scanner model MFC-J6510DW for a number of years, the scanner will scan a full A3 size page and will print out onto a A3 page. However, like most printers and scanners, it often seems to depend on and the flexibility they are used with, some seem to only work with the software provided as my Epson A4 scanner will. My Brother one that I've mentioned seems to be happy using a number of different programmes. Below is the results of scanning part of a drawing, the first being the result of the scan done by its own software.

You should notice that although is has produced an A3 scan, but it's not clear at the top and bottom of the view, that there is a small margin all around it, but it can be seen at both of the sides. When printing this out in Microsoft Office Picture Manager, this also puts a margin around the image, and thus you get a smaller print than the original as can be seen when overlaid on top of the original drawing on my light pad.

To get over this, I first cropped off the margin on the scanned image and printed it out and setting the option of "fit to frame" although I had cropped it a bit too much.

Now when overlaying it onto the original drawing, it is slightly bigger, but is very close to the correct size. I do have a programme that the scanning and printing can be controlled very well, but scans and drawings have to be done on a page that fits into the margins of the printer one is using, the only problem is that it's an old programme from the Window's 95 era and will only work on a 32 bit OS and is really fully good as far as Windows XP. But my Brother one will work with XP OK.

As far as getting an A3 mono laser printer, it seems there are not many about and the laser printers that are around, have both mono and colour printing and most of them only seem to connect by wireless, although I have seen one that uses Ethernet, But this Xerox one seems to have nearly everything including USB connection, but of course the price is not really meant for occasional use, it's more of a full time commercial thing I think.

I did look at your HP one on their website, and it seems they don't now support any OS Windows below 10, so you may have lost your drives older Windows for good.

Regards Nick.

I've had another go and this time succeeded. The HP web-site is very confusing and kept sending me the wrong way.

Mind you it wasn't helped by a partially dislodged USB plug so the driver thought I was installing a new printer!

I tried printing a simple Word document on A4 and after about a dozen passes started to see nearly-legible results, but it will need a lot of cleaning to work properly. Also it is reluctant to pick up the paper but that might be a matter of paper grade, not a printer fault. Gently pushing the sheet made it go in.

HP do support both my types of printer, or at least supply the drivers for them still. Installing them does ask which connection type you want. I was probably using WIN 7 for the A3 printer, and possibly XP for the A4 one.

Hi, I forgot to add the photo of the second overlaid print, in my previous post, where you can see it's almost the same size as the original, just a tad bigger, but still an A3 print.

Regards Nick.

Sorry Nigel but I think you are being too hard on TurboCad (TC) - I'm afraid the problem might lie behind the keyboard!

I've used TC for years and haven't experienced the problems you seem to encounter. I have printed A3 drawings on an A4 printer (as multiple A4 pages) with no problem. Why you are bothering using a Viewport is beyond me - it isn't necessary, at all. And, if you do use a Viewport, be aware that the Viewport itself often introduces a reduction factor of it's own, in addition to any page related reduction!

I don't normally dimension my model , as it ends up too cluttered, but do end up with multiple Paperspaces for individual parts (or groups of them) which I do dimension. Only downside is that if you change the model, you have to redo the changes in the Paperspace(s) too. If you use a viewport changes made to the model are reflected in the paperspace, but dimensions reflect the Model dimensions (when I've used a Viewport, I've drawn the wagon full size and used the Viewport to give me the reduced scale of print I require - e.g. 1:19.05 for 16mm/ft). You can break the link to the full size model, so your dimensions appear in the scale size (if you know how to)!

In it's simplest form, highlight your model, or the bits you want, in Modelspace and paste it into a Paperspace - you can see where the model is bigger than the paper you have selected - set any reduction (or magnification) you need and print the Paperspace.

If TC keeps defaulting to US paper sizes, you need to create a new TC Template for future drawings and set up the features as you need.

Hope this helps.

Tom