I've been wanting life-size paper printouts of OpenScad designs, for example for checking that a PLA front-panel had mount holes that matched my purchased parts, but hadn't found anyone who knew how. I've now stumbled on a method.

Skeinforge run standalone (or from "inside the Configure button" in Repetier) with SkeinLayer enabled pops up a layer viewer, that offers a menu option "File->Export->PostScript". But set to its smallest scale of 10 pixels/mm, the image still prints about 3X lifesize. A workaround was to have GSview convert .ps to PDF, and let FoxIt-6 print the pdf at a fixed scale of 31.86%; functional but cumbersome.

Now I've found, in a PostScript tutorial from Emory U, code for changing default units from points to cm. I changed his constants to do the above scaling. Now GSview prints life-size without the PDF step. Here's his modified code I add to SkeinLayer's .ps output:

matrix currentmatrix /origmat exch def
/umatrix { originmat matrix concatmatrix setmatrix} def
[0.3186 0 0 0.3186 72 72] umatrix

I don't understand the syntax, but it works. The 72's shift the image away from paper margins. One can write a script to painlessly add the above to SkeinLayer's output. If you don't want fill patterns on the size-check printout, make a special Skeinforge config file with fill turned off.

There's probably a simpler way, maybe fiddling with dots/inch to make SkeinLayer native-lifesize. Anyone who's found it please share! --John

Great work John! Will have to take a look at it when I get the forge running again on a new box at home.

Randy