Increasingly, European engineering firms and architects are collaborating with international partners, which means they regularly come into contact with American or British building plans. The biggest stumbling block? The awkward ‘Architectural Scale’.
In Europe we use absolute ratios (such as 1:100 or 1:50). In the United States, the scale is expressed by telling how many “inches on the paper” are equal to “feet in reality”. A common scale is, for example, 1/4” = 1’-0”.
But what exactly does that mean and how do you convert that to our metric system for your own overview or CNC/Plotter software?
What does 1/4” = 1’-0” mean?
This notation means: “A quarter of an inch on the printed paper corresponds to one foot in the real building.”
Because there are 12 inches in one foot, you can also look at this mathematically:
If 1/4 inch equals 12 inches (1 foot), then the scale ratio is:
0.25 : 12 or 1 : 48.
The famous 1/4” = 1’-0” scale is therefore almost identical to our standard 1:50 scale! Yet the conversion for complex scales, such as 3/32” = 1’-0”, is much harder to do in your head (answer: 1:128).
The Europlan Calculator for Imperial Units
Because errors in unit conversions can have disastrous (and expensive) consequences in the construction industry, we have added an ‘Imperial’ module to our Scale Calculator.
Via the AutoCAD Viewport tab on the calculator, you will find our Architectural / Imperial Conversion module at the bottom.
- Simply choose the fraction of the inch (e.g. 3/8”).
- The calculator immediately tells you what the standardized ratio (such as 1:32) is.
- You can also directly copy out the correct AutoCAD ZOOM XP command, or continue with this ratio to the ‘Measure Distance’ tab to immediately convert to centimeters and meters.
Don’t let foreign plans scare you anymore. Use the Imperial Conversion tool today!