Plotting Drawing in a given Scale in AUTOCAD

Plotting Drawing in a given Scale in AUTOCAD

Suppose we have 20m length in original drawing. You can check length by typing command ‘di’ in AutoCAD and pressing the two ends of the line segment.

We want that 20m length to be printed in paper in 1:500 scale.

What will be length of 20m in 1:500 scale?

Ans: 20 * 1/500 = 0.04m = 0.04*1000mm=40mm

So, when we print in 1:500 scale in paper, the 20m length of the original drawing will measure 40mm in paper.

Let’s see how to do that in AutoCAD.

Go to layout and then page setup.

In the plot scale section, there is

_ mm = _ unit

i.e. if we set 1 mm = 1 unit.

What happens??

If you observe the units of length drawn in AutoCAD (Model), you will see that there is no unit displayed. It just says 20 instead of 20m.

It means the AutoCAD understands that as 20 unit not as 20m. When we want to plot, we must specify 1 unit of drawing is how much mm so that AutoCAD can convert that 20units in the unit we want (here we want unit to be mm)

Here we want that 20 unit to be as 40mm in 1:500 scale.

Method 1

Our drawing is in meter (original drawing in Model of AutoCAD)

So, we can set:

1000 mm = 1 unit then AutoCAD will understand that 1unit of drawing is 1000m i.e. 1m in page setup.

And hence 20units = 20,000mm i.e. 20m

Now we want the drawing in 1:500 scale so, 20m in drawing will be 0.04m (= 40 mm) in paper.

It means we have to multiply original AutoCAD drawing (of model space) by 1 and paper drawing by 1/500

i.e. 20m in drawing = 1/500*20m in paper

1m in drawing = 1/500 in paper

Let’s do this in AutoCAD

Double click on viewport to activate it and then you can see scale of viewport. There we will set original drawing to be multiplied by 1 and paper drawing to be multiplied by 1/500.

After creating 1:500 scale simply select the scale and the drawing will adjust itself into that scale.

NOTE: It doesn’t matter what paper size you select, scaling process is same. Even if we have fixed scale to 1:500, and if now we select paper size of A4, the scale will not be affected.

METHOD 2

We have already seen in method 1 how we converted 20m length of original drawing in 40mm (1:500 scale).

Now let’s see METHOD 2 and for the same length.

In this method we will always set 1mm=1unit in page setup (what ever the unit is (if it is in metric otherwise select 1 inch)

And make necessary changes in viewport scale.

Now I have set 1mm = 1 unit in page setup. so, 20 unit of drawing = 20mm in paper (when printed and measured in paper)

But I want 20 units to be of 40mm.

So, what can we do??

Simply, we will multiply original drawing by 1 and paper drawing by 2.

20 unit of original dwg = 20mm in paper (after page setup)

Let’s do this…

20*1 units of original dwg = 20mm*2 in paper (after viewport scale of 2paper = 1drawing)

Activate viewport by double click.

Hence, we will get 20 units = 40mm.

BUT Why 40mm???

Because we have already found that 20units (i.e. 20m) of drawing when printed in paper should be 40mm.

In this method we need to first find what should be the length in paper and accordingly we will multiply the paper drawing.

You can check that from both method we got same result.