One of the most frustrating, yet most common problems when working with building plans, is an incorrectly printed scale. You take out your trusty scale ruler, place it on the plan, and notice that a 5-meter wall suddenly measures only 4.8 meters according to the ruler.
Why does this happen and, more importantly, how do you fix it? Using our online Scale Calculator, this problem is solved in seconds.
The culprit: “Fit to page”
When printing PDF plans on a large format plotter, the setting in the print software is often set by default to “Fit to printable area” or “Fit to page”. The printer then shrinks the document by a few percent (e.g., to 96%) so that it certainly fits within the print margins of the paper roll.
The result? A plan that looks perfect, but whose scale absolutely no longer matches the stated ‘1:50’ or ‘1:100’ in the title block.
Solution: Calculate the actual scale
To be able to take accurate measurements on this plan again, you need to know the effective printed scale. Here is how you easily do that in 3 steps via our tool:
- Find a reference: Find a known dimension on your plan. This can be a written dimension line (e.g.
500 cm), or a standard object such as a doorway (often90 cm). - Measure on paper: Take a standard ruler (in millimeters) and physically measure this reference distance on your faulty plan. (Suppose: the 500 cm dimension line actually measures 48 mm on your sheet).
- Use the tool: Navigate to the Determine Scale tab on our Europlan Scale Calculator. Enter the measured distance (48 mm) and the actual distance (5 m).
The tool will now immediately tell you that your plan is at scale 1:104.17. From now on, using the ‘Measure Distance’ tab, you can accurately calculate back from your plan to reality using this new scale.
Reprinting the plan correctly
Would you rather print the plan at the perfect, original scale? Our tool also directly calculates the correction factor for your printer. In the example above, the tool will advise you to set your printer to an enlargement to undo the “Fit to page” error.
Save yourself time and unnecessary miscalculations on site. Discover the ‘Determine Scale’ tool today!