Scaling to plot and scaling bar

I'm new and using AutoCad 2009 Civil 3D and I have two basic questions (help me in layman's terms please):

1. Scaling always confuses me! For example I just drew a line in a new drawing of 600 m (clicked line and typed in 600 in horizonatl direction). (units are set to decimal). I clicked on layout and it puts my line into an 8.5x11 layout. I moved this line to where I want to center it, checked the viewport scale in the bottom right and see it's around 0.0113 so I say OK that about 0.01 or 1:100 and I click on the viewport scale and change to 1:100 and it slightly adjusts and it looks fine. I then plot the layout and measure with a 1:100 scale and my 600 m line is like 15.3 m !! How the beep do you plot to a scale in this program?

2. I have a scaling bar from another drawing that someone created and it is a block. I can click on the block and in the properties menu opens a heading saying custom visibility and I can choose from a wide range of scales that automatically changes the text labels from 0 to whatever. However, how do I make the actual size of the scaling bar match the scale labels especially for different sizes of paper or if I just wanted to have it at a different size (and different scale of course)? So in practical terms say I copy/pasted this scale bar into a drawing and it's at some random size and I change its custom attribute to 1:20,000 and now need to make the scale size fit? Usually I have just drawn a line from 0 to the end of the scale and used that with what it should be as the ratio to to scale up or down. Better way?

Scaling confuses everyone, welcome to the club

2) (because it's easier) I would insert that block in Paper Space instead - that way you don't need to scale it at all. It's always the same size.

1) this is tricky to figure out what is going wrong, and we need some more info to get it right. First, you are plotting from Paper Space (also called Layout) right? Since you mention viewports, I assume you are, but want to check.

In your Page Setup Manager (or your plot-dialogue box), do you have a scale set there? I hope you have it set to 1:1 there, so that your drawing as seen in Paper Space is actually 8.5x11 if you measure it.

PS. While the Beginner Forum might indeed be a better place for this question, posting the same question twice is never a good idea. Most look through all the forums anyway, and if a question is very wrong, the mods (i.e. me! ) will move it.

My exact steps are as follows (maybe you can try it?)

1. Ppen autocad, click new and open acad.dwg template (blank default acad template)

2. Pick polyline and type in 600 with ortho on. Zoom extents.

3. Click on Layout1 tab. Page manager setup comes up and and shows Layout1

and I click close. The line is shown in this viewport and I click on model space and it shows the scale is 0.013907. I change this to 1:100 (0.01) and the line scales down a little bit to the new scale.

4. Right click on Layout1 - plot - change plotter to my canon. Paper is already set to 8.5x11. What to plot = layout. Scale is already set at 1"="1. Click OK and plot.

5. The line plots and maybe takes up 55% of the 11" width of page. I measure with my 1:100 scale and the line is about 15.4 m

Obviously a 1:100 scale isn't going to scale a 600 m line on a piece of 8.5x11 paper. Would need more like 1:2500.

p.s. Hi Tiger, thanks for the response. Noticed you are from Sweden (I'm from Vancouver, Canada - lots of swedes play here in nhl) and was wondering if the NHL hockey games being played there this weekend with Detroit vs St louis is hyped up or not?

OK I've sort of got this figured out. I drew a line by typing in 600 and I changed the plot manager scale from 1"=1" to 1:1 mm and that shrunk my viewport (I guess by a factor of 25.4?). So I grabbed the corners of the viewport and enlarged it and then set the viewport scale to 1:10. Plotted the layout (1:1 mm now in the plot manager instead of 1"=1") and measured with my 1:10 scale the line being 0.6 m. So assuming this is correct?...then the drawing units in autocad must be mm as my line should be 600m. Although I thought acad was unitless.. So if I want to dimension my line as being 600 m then do I still draw a line of 600 units and add a suffix of a 'm' to show this? (but that would still mean a 1:10 scale would measure it incorrectly) Or do I draw a line of 600x1000 (600,000) units and somehow dimension with a label that is 1/1000th of that? Please guide me in the right direction!