Scale Drawings.

[nkp_174]

In the past, I've had great success creating a drawing in AutoCAD by drawing shapes over a picture. The result is a basic drawing of the South Park's only 4-4-0 (a Dawson & Bailey product).

I've used CAD a fair bit in the past. There are a hand full of shortcuts which dramatically ease drawing stuff.

As a fall back, you can either copy from...or take a screen shot of the pdf. Then import it into a free photo program such as MS Photo Editor or GIMP. (GIMP is a free competitor to Photoshop) Your printer will consistently print from MS Photo Editor in the same size (I don't recall the pixel to measurement conversion)...allowing you to scale it that way.

The math to do it by hand:
For a 30' length in HO...
30 ft *12 inches per ft is 360"
360"/87.1 = 4.133" (so 4.331" equals an HO 30')

If that 30' length prints out to be a real 5" long...
decrease it to: 4.133"/5" = 82.66% of the size.