Architects Scale

[Reaper]

Can someone tell me where to find directionsor tutorials on using an Arcnitechs scale? Thanks, Darrell

[JD]

There are usually 4 or 6 different scales on it. Each one corresponds to a specific scale (1/4" = 1', 1/2" = 1' etc.) Usually each major marking is in feet and the minor ones near zero are inches or multiples thereof. To use the 1/4" = 1' scale place the scale on paper. Make a mark at 0. Then make a mark at whatever distance the scale reads (say 10). You will now have a line which is 2 1/2" long but which would represent 10 feet on the drawing.

Same thing goes for metric or engineers scale except the ratios and markings are different.

-Jack

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 22:59:29 -0600, Reaper brought forth from the murky depths:

They're right next to the "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" CDs on the 3rd row, 2nd shelf, left, at Orifice Depot.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - If God approved of nudity, we all would have been born naked. ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

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[Jon Endres, PE]

WTF is an "arcnitech"?

[Allyn Vaughn]

You could always refer to the owner's manual but here goes:

1. Lay scale on drawing with flat side down.
2. Connect first point of item to be measured with the zero point located on the scale.
3. Find number on scale for second point of measurement.
4. Read number.

Repeat as necessary

Allyn

[Rico]

Lighten up PE, It was simple mispilling.

An arachnitech is a person who designs spiders.

[Slowhand]

And to think *I* was the only person who wondered where these tutorials were. ;-) SH

[Grandpa]

[Larry Jaques]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 11:22:41 -0800, "Slowhand" > on the 3rd row, 2nd shelf, left, at Orifice Depot.

Oh, I thought he was asking for Arachniphobic scales, which weigh your fears about spiders. They're in OD. I have no ideas what a "directionsor" tutorial is or where to find one. Maybe in Cuba? No, that's directiones para dictatorador, isn't it?

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[EL]

[Grandpa]

[Jay Windley]

No kidding. The amount of effort expended in ridicule exceeds the effort required simply to answer the question.

Architect scales are not rocket science. (Rocket scientists use engineering scales anyway.) I assume you're talking about an architect's scale in English units.

Each edge sports two scales, one reading left-to-right and the other reading right-to-left. That's just so that they can fit several scales onto one physical stick. The number in the margin at each end is the fraction of an inch that's intended to represent one foot in the scale that begins at that end. For most house plans, the 1/4 scale is used. That's one-fourth inch in the drawing equaling one foot in the finished product.

On my scale the 1/4 scale shares an edge with the 1/8 scale. The 1/4 numbers start at the left and march to the right, while the 1/8 numbers start at the right and increase to the left. Make sure you pay attention which numbers and which tick marks refer to which scale. Since there are tick marks every 1/8 inch for the 1/8 scale, two of those ticks represent a foot in the 1/4 scale. So make sure you're using the right set of numbers.

Now on the "negative" side of the zero tick mark (to the left of zero on my

1/4 scale) is one scaled foot's worth of inch ticks. Or, if the scale is too small, ticks for every two or three inches. It might be clearer if you find one of the larger scales like 1/2 or 3/4 and look at its subdivided foot.

So if you need to draw a line representing 14 feet 3 inches, lay out the scale so one end point is on the "3 inches" tick in the subdivided foot, and your other end point will be at the "14" tick. If you're reading lines using the scale, lay the zero tick at one end point and see which "foot" tick is closest to the other end point without being longer. Then slide the scale so that this foot marking is on the other end point. That gives you the "feet" portion of the measurement. The first end point will now lie within the subidivded foot area and give you the "inches" portion of the measurement.

Good luck.

--Jay

[Juergen Hannappel]

[...]

Oh, wow. Thank heaven for the metric system where no such ultra-strange confusions occur! 1/4 scale every unbiased observer would consider to be one unit in the drawing signifies 4 units in the real worls (or maybe vice versa), but that 1/4 really means 1:48...

[Lowell Holmes]

[B a r r y B u r k e J r .]

The OP may even have an "Engineer's Scale", which would seem entirely confusing if the OP was thinking it's an architects's scale.

We were all new at something at one time!

Barry

[Jay Windley]

Sigh.

I was trained as an engineer, but grew up in a house full of architects. My drawing station has a hodge-podge of architectural and engineering tools. Anyway, in engineering we frequently use decimal subdivisions of English units instead of the base-two fractions used by most of the American and English readers of this group. So a quarter-inch dowel pin is shown on the engineering drawing as having a diameter of 0.2500 inch and not 1/4 inch. Yes, we still it a "quarter-inch dowel pin".

Most of us can work in metric units just as easily. Technical people can usually see the advantages to metric measurements at least in terms of easy computation among measurements and international interoperability. But the average American sees little advantage to using metric units. There's no clear advantage to buying milk by the liter as opposed to by the quart or gallon. There's no clear advantage to baking in Fahrenheit degrees instead of Celsius degrees. But there's a perceptible disadvantage in trying to convert wholesale from one system to another, in the form of error and miscalculation. That first generation that has to abandon its familiar system in favor of an unfamiliar system with little or no advantage gained, tends to stall the migration.

| 1/4 scale every unbiased observer would consider to be one unit | in the drawing signifies 4 units in the real world

Possibly, except that the scale notation is usually more explicit. Although the scale instrument used in creating the drawing lists only the fraction, the notation in the drawing will say something like

1/4" = 1'

where the " and ' are abbreviations for inch and foot, respectively. In practice it's very difficult to mistake 1/4 scale for 1:4 or even 1:48.

--Jay

[Luigi Zanasi]

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:55:48 +0100, Juergen Hannappel scribbled

Notice the slash '/' meaning fraction, not ratio. So it should be absolutely obvious to someone who is not a complete fool that it is not a ratio, but means 1/4 inch to one foot (1/4"=1'), which is about the same as 1:50 (note the colon, not slash) on your metric scale. Considerable savings in scale manufacturing are obtained by omitting the ["=1'] part. Equally obvious is the 3/32 scale on my scale. It should be immediately obvious to anyone with more than half a brain that the ratio is 1:128.

Get with the program, Juergen! It's time to abandon your antiquated

19th century metric system based on base 10. This is the 21st Century, where everything is base 2, so 1:128 = 1:2^7 or 1:1000000. I leave the hexadecimal equivalent as an exercise for the reader.

I'll let one of the Muricans to explain to you the penny/shilling/pound system for measuring the length of nails and why it is so much better than measuring them in inches or millimetres.

:-)

[Keep it to Usenet please]

You know, there's 10 kinds of people ... Those that know binary and those that don't.

[Keep it to Usenet please]

Actually, there's three edges, each with two scales per face, so you're looking at 12 scales, but one is typically a plain ruler, so it's really only 11 scales.

[Mark]

But can the full scale be counted as a scale as it's scaled 1:1 which has no ratio and thus no scaling involved.

?