Found out I was using the wrong scale on my architectural prints for 2 years

I was at a shop in Denver last month and another drafter glanced at my prints and asked why I was working off a half scale. Turns out the architect had been sending me 1/8" scale drawings and I had been reading them as 1/4" the whole time. That explained why my wall lengths never matched up and I was always cutting drywall three times. Has anyone else found a hidden setting in your print scaling that threw everything off?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan5437d ago

Hold up, wouldn't the wall lengths have been way off from day one if you were misreading the scale that badly? Seems like you'd notice the first time you tried to frame a wall and the numbers just didn't work.

alice9287d ago

Jumping in late here but @evan543 you're missing something. That builder might have been reading the scale right for the main house but then used a different one for the garage without realizing it. I saw a guy do that once with a 1/4 inch scale on one page and a 1/8 inch on the next. Framed the whole garage 6 feet shorter than it should have been. Had to take it all down and start over. So yeah, you can mess up real bad and still think you've got the right numbers until something concrete forces you to double check.

spencer_gonzalez17d ago

A buddy of mine out in Aurora spent nearly a year measuring things wrong on a set of plans for a custom house. He kept telling the GC that the master bedroom was gonna be 12 feet by 14 feet, but every time they went to lay out the framing it just felt cramped and short. Turns out he was reading a 3/16 scale as 1/8, so his whole layout was a few feet too small on every room. The GC only caught it when he showed up with a laser measure and the numbers didn't match the print at all.