Scaling Queries

Hi All,

I have some questions about autocad and scale on paper.

I have a drawing on autocad which I have been making changes on. I want to understand how to do figure out the scale of drawing?

At the monent the drawing says 1:150 scale but I produce drawings on A3 and also A0. As sheet size increases wont the scale also change?

It depends on how you are setting the drawing up. Most people draw at 1 to 1 in model space then set the viewport to the required scale in the paper space tab. If this is how you are doing it then the scale of the print wont change so long as you print at 1 to 1. I have a template file in which I have created paper space tabs for A3 to A0 so they are set ready. When I then create the print I just need to set the scale of the viewport.

Are you drawing all objects in model space at full size?

Are you making use of paper space layouts and viewports?

The only way you can figure out the scale of the drawing once its plotted is to have some kind of reference points on the drawing. If you have the cad file then it should be drawn 1 to 1 in the model space and you can check what scale is in paper space by checking the properties of the viewport.

Sorry to get back so late guys.

Umm, When i got the drawing it wasnt drawn to 1:1 scale on model space. I made the modifications needed and then created symbols and put them on the drawing in model space. I've made a tab for paper space: went to page layout and made the paper size A0. I copy and pasted the border from model space to paper space and scaled to make it fit on paper space. Then I got a viewport of the drawing and zoomed to make it fit properly. Oh BTW I think I have the model space units set to mm and have scaled the drawing to 1:1 scale.

I did in the following manner:

- I know each frame spacing is 500 mm so i drew a line of 500 units and used ref scale to scale one frame spacing to the size of the line.

Back in paper space when I see the scale in the bottom tab it says its 1:0.00132.. or something along those lines which is surely wrong? Am I going about this the correct way?

Did you scale your model space items to full size? If you did, all you need to do is go to the paper space tab and add a viewport. Once you have added a viewport, select it then click the viewport scale on the bottom left next to the lock button. then select the scale you want.

Somebody might correct me here but I believe AutoCAD paper space tabes are allways in mm even if the model space is in metres. So when you draw your drawing frame in the paperspace tab you always draw them at true size i.e. for A0 841x1189. The attached file might help. The model space is in metres and I've drawn a 500m square. In paper space the scale is set to 1/1000. Note the size of the a0 sheet measures in mm not m.

Drawing1.dwg

Thanks Bogbadbob658 for the attached drawing example. It did help me a little. The problem I ws having was that the I had fit to page checked on the plot scale option. Feel a bit amateur being stuck on a little thing like that but it seems like its the little things in AutoCad that trip us up .

So now that I got things to scale, I've locked the viewport with a scale of 1:150.

I just checked the international standard for this particular drawing I'm preparing and it says the symbols I use must be 6mm in size. The problem is that I put the symbols on model space and theve been scaled up accordingly. I drew a line measuring 6mm on paper space next to the symbols, I was hoping they would be big enough but it turns out the symbols are slightly smaller than Im allowed according to the standard.

Does anyone know if there is a way I can enlarge the symbols to meet the standard size as I have them now or am I forced to draw them all again on paper space which is probably going to take a very long time.

Thanks in advance

If they are the wrong size then select the whole symbol and then resize using scale command then select "ref" in the list then use the 6mm line to get them to the right scale

You can make the blocks annotative which means if you switch annotative on it will automatically scale to the correct size. It's not quite as easy as I've made it sound but that's the theory. Unfortunately I don't use it and can't explain how to do it. Search the forum for annotative blocks or start a new thread. Alternatively have look on youtube.

Annotative blocks are blocks that have had an annotative scale or scales assigned to them such that the blocks will display at the proper size based upon the scale of one's paper space layout viewport(s). Text, dimensions, and hatches can also be made annotative.