People,
I didn't get an answer to this a year ago and the problem has come again so I thought I would repost to see if I have any more luck with responses this time:
If I produce a new drawing on an A4 page with Display and User units in mm with a scaling factor of 1.0, I can draw a rectangle of XxY and when I use the Visualise->Measure Path Extension with a Scale Factor of 100 and Length Unit in m - I get exactly the right dimensions for the rectangle for its perimeter length and area - all good!
However, I have imported a surveyor's map from a PDF file into Inkscape SVG (using defaults) and I need to be able to draw rectangles on it as above in mm (like my test) that will correspond to m in the real world but the drawing is on an A3 page and I have tried scaling and everything else I can think of and Googled a lot but I still can't do what I was able to do with my little test case.
So:
How can I convert the drawing to be on an A4 page with mm units so the mm correspond to m in the real world and the Measure Path Extension will give me the correct result in m and sqm?
The original PDF says the scale was 1:500.
I am using:
Inkscape 0.92.3 (2405546, 2018-03-11)
Thanks,
Phil.