I think what we need is a visual aid. I don't know which Tink you were trying to make, so I just picked a couple of examples.
We are limited in height, by what fits on the mat in the vertical direction. But sometimes when they are off the mat, we think we should be able to make them bigger.
See how the first Tink, doesn't look very big, but if you look at the ruler, her wings go all the way to the top and her feet all the way to the bottom. That is a 5.5" Tink, even though she looks very skinny and only about 4". Same thing with the other one, most of the image is only 4" but her foot extends down making her max out the mat vertically.
If you have CDS, you can rotate the image, but you will still be limited by the vertical height of the mat. So you still might not be able to make a 10" image, even though you have 12" to work with now, because the width of the image might be 7" which would be more than the 5.5" we have to work with in the other direction. You can make an individual shoe bigger because you are going from a 1/2" piece to a 2" or 4" piece, which is less than the 5.5" maximum space on the mat. But no, you will not be able to force the base to be anything bigger than the 5.5."
Now, if you have the dial on the base set at 5.5" but the entire piece, from toe tip to wing tip, is only coming out 3" or something, then it is possible that your cartridge is defective, or the bug isn't processing correctly (maybe a reset is necessary), but I'm guessing it just doesn't look 5.5" in height even though there is one part of it that is making it actually 5.5".
Is that helpful and does it make sense?