orthographic scale = cm of x at 300dpi?

Support Basics & Interface
1

I found it hard to think of a correct title for this post,
basically put, i have designed a model that is made of many essentially 2d parts. In an ideal situation i would send a file off and have the parts laser cut. but for tests i would like to print the parts out and cut them out of card.

Now here is the problem. An A4 page is 21cmx29.7cm. at 300dpi thats 3508 x 2480 pixels.
with that set i added a plane 21x29.7 blender units in size and an orthographic camera.
Now what relation does orthographic scale have to anything? is it just an arbitrary thing or does it relate to pixels in any way?
I can move it up and down until the plane fits but that seems messy and imprecise.
the scale is quite important as they need to fit with some existing pieces.

Edit while writing
Setting the orthographic scale to the CM value of the X value of the render at 300dpi seems correct… so is that what orthographic scale is?

2

see these


http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Render/Render_to_Print

happy ccycles

3

Thanks RickyBlender, but although a nice addon it doesn’t relate directly to my problem. The addon sets render size but does nothing to the camera itself. What i am asking about is the cameras relation to object scale, as in i want to print a 1 blender unit plane as a 1 cm square on a sheet of A4.

I think what i said in my first post is correct, its just i cannot find documentation to confirm it.

4

just follow first tut
camera is set as orthographic mode to cover the paper size then add what ever you want on your sheet !
with a scale of 1 inch per 300
that 1 inch can be anys scale you want !

it should work

happy cycles