PrintPlan — True-scale tiled print

What it is for

A sewing pattern, a stencil for a garden bed edge, a drilling template for a shelf or a cardboard model: you have a drawing that must come out at exactly 600 mm, but your printer only takes A4 or Letter. This tool scales an outline or SVG drawing to a measured physical size, splits it across as many sheets as needed with an overlap for gluing, adds alignment marks and sheet labels, and produces a PDF with an assembly cover page and a 100 mm calibration square.

Without an SVG, the target width and height describe a plain rectangle. In the browser you can also trace a PDF page or a PNG or JPEG image into black-and-white contours. That is contour extraction, not a colour print. SVGs with scripts, embedded text, masks, filters or external references are rejected rather than printed half right.

Worked example

The default is a 400 × 300 mm rectangle on A4, Automatic orientation, 15 mm Overlap and 10 mm Printer margin. Result: 5 sheets including the cover, 2 rows × 2 columns, landscape, "4 content sheets + one cover · Printable area: 277 × 190 mm". Compare paper layouts shows why landscape won: A4 portrait would need 7 sheets.

A shelf template of 600 × 420 mm on US Letter, titled "Shelf template". The result: "9 sheets including the assembly cover", 2 rows × 4 columns in portrait. Each Letter sheet leaves a printable area of 195.9 × 259.4 mm. After the 15 mm overlap, every column advances 180.9 mm and every row 244.4 mm, so four columns cover 600 mm and two rows cover 420 mm. Landscape would need 3 × 3 content pages and 10 sheets, so automatic orientation picks portrait. The sheets are labelled A1 to A4 in the top row and B1 to B4 below, printed on PDF pages 2 to 9 after the cover. The same template on A4 also needs 9 sheets.

How to read the result

• Sheets incl. cover, Sheet rows and Sheet columns tell you how much paper to load. Width (mm) and Height (mm) confirm the target size.
• Compare paper layouts lists sheet counts for A4 and Letter in both orientations.
• Assembly overview draws the target canvas shaded with every printable sheet area outlined; each label tells you its PDF page, for example "B2 · PDF 7".
• printplan.pdf is the file to print. Vector SVG and Result JSON document the layout.

Tips and common mistakes

• Print at 100 % or "actual size". "Fit to page" in the print dialog shrinks every sheet and ruins the scale.
• Measure the 100 mm calibration square with a ruler before you cut anything. If it measures 97 mm, your print settings are still scaling.
• Set Printer margin to at least the unprintable border of your printer; 10 mm is safe for most home printers.
• Overlap gives you room to glue or tape. Line up the alignment marks, not the paper edges.
• Preserve aspect ratio keeps an SVG's proportions inside the target box; Fill target dimensions stretches it to exactly the width and height you entered.
• Curves are flattened to straight segments with 0.15 mm tolerance, which is far below what scissors can follow.

FAQ

Why is there an extra page?

The first page is the assembly cover with the sheet map and the calibration square. The content sheets follow from page 2.

Can I print a photo at a large size?

Only as traced black-and-white contours. The tool is meant for outlines and templates, not full-colour posters.

My SVG was rejected. Why?

It probably contains text, a clipping path, a mask, a filter, a script or a linked file. Convert text to paths and flatten effects in your drawing program, then try again.

Which paper sizes are supported?

A4 and US Letter, in portrait or landscape.