Measurement disparity between dimension and the distance tool dialog box

[card trix]

I have now come across this issue a couple of times.

I have opened a PDF I have been sent and used the distance tool to measure it.

The dimension that appears on screen says 570mm, but the distance tool dialogue box says it is only 50.7mm.

The page size shown at the bottom left of PDF Editor says 710mm x 500mm, but when I open the PDF in a graphics program (actually 3 different programs) it is only 50mm x 71mm!

Is the issue in the PDF or the distance tool, or something else entirely?

Many Thanks

ManxTomkinson Mailer AW.pdf

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello card trix,

You have likely set up a scaling factor for your measurement tool - and that is why the "actual" length of the measurement on the page and the distance shown are different.
Please take a look here and this should help you sort out the scaling factor you are using:
How do I change the units of measurement that the measuring tools use?


Kind regards,
Stefan

[card trix]

Hi Stefan,

I haven't changed anything since I calibrated the measuring tool years ago.

There is definitely something amiss as there is too much conflicting information.

If I change the scaling (in PDF Editor) it doesn't affect the page size information (bottom left of screengrab) and my scaling is set up to be 100% as you can see from the attached PDF screengrabs.

The page size shown in the bottom left is incorrect as if I open the PDF in a graphics package it is only 1/10 of the indicated size.

The measurement across the middle of the drawing is incorrect as it is multiplying the size of the item again by a factor of 10.

I appreciate that it could be information within the PDF that is causing this and I'm certainly not pointing the finger at PDF Editor, I just need to know what is happening.

Bizarrely if I open it in Acrobat Reader and measure it all dimensions and dialogue boxes agree on the size!

It probably doesn't help but I have also been sent Litho printed sheets of this PDF and the size is as the measurement across the middle (weird).

So something somewhere is causing misinformation, but I know it isn't my scaling calibration.

I have just heard back from the printer and the PDF they have measures correctly and shows up the correct size in PDF Editor and when opened to edit it.

So it is definitely something to do with the PDF, and PDF Editor is trying desperately to tell me there is something wrong but doesn't know what.

Measurement Disparity.pdf

[card trix]

Hi Stefan,

Update on this PDF.

I asked the printer to open the file for me and they got this message in Illustrator when they tried to open it.

image.png

I don't know what this means as I don't have Illustrator.

Regards,

David

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello David,

There's certainly something unusual with that file. We've asked a colleague from the dev team to take a look and will post again here as soon as we have further info on this.

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello again!

After speaking with the dev team and looking over the file data, we have found that this page does indeed contain a special "page scale" value which is hidden and cannot be changed at this time. What this means is that, despite the minor confusion and discrepancy in that one portion of the floating measurement info box, we are displaying the page as the document itself is specifically requesting we do. Adobe appears to do exactly the same, and we have not been able to locate an ability on their end to manually change this scale either. We expect that other apps which do not show this inbuilt page scale simply are not aware the property exists and should be respected.

As for the warning that is shown in illustrator, That seems to indicate exactly what would be expected from the above, Becuase the page has a "large sized canvas" due to the page scaling that is in place, illustrator is informing them that it will be changing the scaling to a more appropriate size, or they can choose to enable to option that will show the file in its intended size, and then they will see it in illustrator as the document intent, 710*500mm

As a followup to this, I should note that while we are looking into the possibility of allowing changes to this value, the Dev team is not currently certain that it is possible to do so. In any case, we will be working towards displaying the properly scaled values in all boxes for files like this, hopefully in an upcoming release. (This does mean that the ~500mm measurement you see in our editor is intended, and will remain in place).

Kind regards,

[card trix]

Hi Stefan,

I looked up the error message and on the Adobe FAQ page it explains what it is doing; basically, it scales down to 1/10 the size.

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/illustrator/kb/large-sized-canvas-troubleshooting.html

Not very helpful if you aren't using an Adobe product as if there is no size or scale reference in the PDF you could easily output it way smaller than it should be.

I will definitely keep an eye out for this in the future.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, card trix

Sorry we could not offer the solution you were looking for, but thank you for bringing this to our attention so that we can ensure it is working fully as dictated by the document intent. I hope knowing that this may happen helps you to avoid the issues that come with it in the future.

Kind regards,