I have a drawing of a ship. The drawing is not in any given scale. I have the measurements of the actual ship. Is there any way to scale the drawing to the scale I want?

as long as it's drawn in scale..... Check several of the measurements & be sure they scale the same. if that checks out, you should be able to reduce/enlarge it as needed.

Matt,

What would the steps be to get a drawing to 1/35 scale and get it to print out correctly using adobe?

a ship you say? In 1/35 scale will be enormous. a smallish ship of 200 feet or 2400 inches will be 2400/35 = 68 inches long.
Is that what you want?

Yes. It needs to be 52.91 inches long.

print scaling in acrobat is in the file | print box.
how big is the drawing you want to scale up? If can you print it at 100%, then you can carefully measure the length of the ship on the drawing. say this comes out to 15". 54.91/15 = 3.66.
file print again and choose 366% in the scaling box. Then it will show you some page layout options involving several pieces of paper.

Hi Sam: This is actually quite simple. Take the measurement of your model- divided by the measurement on your drawing - and that is your scale. ie if your drawing is 10" and you want your model to be 5". enter the number you want it to "be" divided by the number that it "is". So 5 divided by 10 = 0.5, or 50%. If you want your model to be 21" long and your drawing is 48", then 21 divided by 48 is 43.7% . If you want your model to be 48" long and your drawing is 21" long then 48 divided by 21 is 2.28 or 228%. Hope this helps. You can use any numbering system to figure this out. Printers measurement or metric is a little simpler, but when you get the hang of it it is quite easy. Hope this helps. Bob

Don't forget - the thickness of the lines of the original drawing will also be enlarged and could be source of some dimensional discrepancies.