how to determine the scale of the drawing?

I have a .dwg drawing, and the same one but in .pdf file format. On the .pdf one, there stands the scale (1:500), but on .dwg one there is no scale.

I was wondering, how could I determine the scale of the .dwg one?

Thank you.

Easiest sollution: ask the person that sent you the drawing.

Usually you draw in 1:1 but ive seen a lot of strange drawings...

Is this drawing in paper space or model space ? has it got any dims on the drawing in model space ?

I can not ask the person that sent me the files

Sparky you are right ! At the Model space tab, there stands, scale R 1:1000.

And the units are Milimeters. So I guess this means, 1.0 length unit in this .dwg file is a 1 meter?

1:1 is the norm 4 model space ie 1unit =1mm, if you have a know dim then measure it see what it reads

Thank you for the reply once again. Sorry if I sound boring Sparky.

what do you mean by "if you have a know dim then measure it see, what it reads"

here is the file:

http://www.gamefront.com/files/20173230/Vorl%C3%A4ufiger+H%C3%B6henplan+H%C3%B6henbahn+Seenplateau.dwg

Sorry dims means dimensions, the paper space states 1:1000 because your drawing is of a landscape im guess it will be metres not mm, but im not sure sorry m8, I expect someone will come along and confirm that for you

This is a grid tick. Did you check the distance between adjacent grid ticks?

thank you for the reply eldon.

No I did not. I even did not know what are adjacent grid ticks?

How can that help me with this? Sorry is I sound as an amateur.

These are two adjacent grid ticks (next to each other) and if you do a bit of mental arithmetic, and measure between them, you should get the distance of 100 units.

Your drawing does not give you unambiguous units, but you will have to see what sense you can make of the general dimensions, which seem to be metric. Does the contoured area cover 600m or 600cm or 600mm? You can probably tell.

The person who created the drawing has not done a good job because the drawing should have the information in it. For example, I draw the grid ticks like this, and you can see immediately that the units are metres.

thank you for the help Eldon. The presented surface is a mountain slope - so the units are in meters.

I owe you a beer.

thank you.

it seems the drawer made this mistake also:

whenever you draw something you draw it in 1:1 scale, right? And the draftman, drew it in 1:1000 scale?

Check the drawing units. It was probably done in mm (not m) if it is 1000x larger than you would expect it to be.

Perhaps he was drawing at metre units after all.

The only reference that I can find to mm units is for the DesignCenter blocks scaling. Perhaps he never had to use this feature, and never bothered to change the units from the default setting. Unless you can speak to him, you will never know for sure. One of life's little mysteries

Check the drawing units. It was probably done in mm (not m) if it is 1000x larger than you would expect it to be.

Did you actually look at the drawing posted? Where can you check the drawing units? I have never seen a drawing that actually names what the drawing units are. But then I only use an old version of AutoCAD, perhaps it is a new feature.

format - drawing setup - units

Is that a screen grab from the supplied drawing? I don't have that feature, so it would be part of my learning today, if you could post a screen grab from the OP's drawing. Thank you.

ah no it isn't from the OP's drawing - just showing how to see the unit settings (AutoCAD 2009)

EDIT: i cannot view units on OP's dwg as it has elements from a newer version.

units are decimal throughout from what I can see ?

And I am always told how non-confusing the metric system is compared to Imperial.