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Basics, Sheet Sizes & Borders
Just printed a set of house plans for a builder I share office space with. There is a particular design company that does a good bit of work in the area for home design. Every time it is one of their plans, they have a arch D size sheet of paper with essentially no margins. When printed, parts of the border and title block are missing because they seem to make their border for a 24×36 sheet 23.99×35.99.
CAD gurus, is an actual space in from the sheet size for the border an old fashioned concept that is no longer used? If not, what are the borders spaces you use?
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26 Replies
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I think that no border at all is a clean look.
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There are many, often there are required border offsets. I do like 1/2″ all the way around. Borders aren’t as necessary as they used to be, but making prints all the way to the edge is a heavy lift usually.
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Survey friend uses double lines for the border on his maps. The corners have curved radius, it looks fine. He used to use straight arrows to point his text to objects on the map, but I talked him into using curved lines.
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I think that no border at all is a clean look.
Seriously or just being facetious?
A friend of mine does not use any line work to define his title block area, just white space. It actually does look very clean.
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…but making prints all the way to the edge is a heavy lift usually
The plotter I have has an option for “small margins”, but that is still about a quarter inch.
I still use the inch and a half on the left side even though I haven’t done much that might be physically bound in a plan set in a very long time. Might be time to revisit margins on my drawings – it would be nice to have that little extra room on some drawings.
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The corners have curved radius, it looks fine.
One company several counties over uses the rounded corners. It does look fine to me.
I’ve not seen someone using a double line, that is a new one to me.
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@jon-payne
https://mtbachelor.co.washington.or.us/images/survey/dev/Surveys/33799.pdf
https://www4.multco.us/Surveyimages/Survey/66000-67999/66757.pdf
Here are a couple R.O.S.’s I did without borders. I like the look.
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I’m a retired electronics engineer, not a surveyor, and most of my work was done in various versions of CAD, not on paper. (Even in the 1980s). I would be worried about leaving off borders on paper or mylar plots because of how they might be used by homeowners and recording office visitors.
There is more and more tendency to take pictures of documents using phones. And the phones are using clever software to automatically crop and straighten out pictures of documents. I would think borders would help the phones do a better job, while borderless might lead to missing information, or distorted pictures, after the clever software gets done with it.
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I can’t think why anybody would be messing with photographing paper sheets when a pdf copy can be downloaded from a public source for free. In the case of the two surveys I posted the only full sized paper copy that ever existed was the one I signed and delivered to the County Surveyor, and that is either deep in the CS vaults, or, more likely, recycled paper. The clients got pdfs emailed to them and that is more than they wanted. In order to get a paper copy to scan you would have to download the pdf and print it out!
In the event that the client had wanted a paper copy, or my state law had dictated that they get one, I would likely regard the chance of them f’ing up an attempt to photograph and copy it to be a plus and not a minus.
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@norman-oklahoma In my state, surveyors under certain conditions are supposed to upload pdfs of certain surveys to a public site, but the law has only been in force a few years, and only one such survey has been uploaded for my entire town.
The town, which is where land records are recorded, has only paper or mylar maps, no PDFs at all. Most of the maps are too big to place on the small photocopier.
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I still prefer a lined border, although @norman-oklahoma ‘s ROS looks nice and clean without one.
Our standard border (ANSI D 22×34) is sort of a modernist style:
I don’t mind it, I actually like it more than the geomatics department ROS template. But the ROS has to be 18×24 and we try to keep everything consistent.
While it is far less likely that someone would be printing out full size these days, it’s still best practices to keep content away from the actual paper edges because there aren’t that many printers that can/will go all the way to the edge.
Put another way, if one were to put out a drawing with content all the way to the edges, it’s on them when the recipient has to scale the whole thing down in order to print it, and then the cited scale on the face of the map is now incorrect.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
I like the look of Norman’s plats.
An invisible border.
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@jon-payne
https://mtbachelor.co.washington.or.us/images/survey/dev/Surveys/33799.pdf
https://www4.multco.us/Surveyimages/Survey/66000-67999/66757.pdf
Here are a couple R.O.S.’s I did without borders. I like the look.
Thanks for the examples. I’ve never seen someone not use a border, so I’m not sure if I like/don’t like it or if it is just so different from what I am used to that I haven’t wrapped my mind around the idea of letting go of the border.
I think the key thing going for the borderless examples you posted is that you have forced the eye to accept an imaginary border by the way things are lined up. The second example shows that much better with the way the ends of the streets all line up very neatly on the top, bottom, and left of the page. I wonder if a full justification on the narrative would strengthen that imaginary border on the right.
Nice work!
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…it’s still best practices to keep content away from the actual paper edges because there aren’t that many printers that can/will go all the way to the edge.
Yes. The prints I discussed in the OP actually had line work going just outside of the border as well. Fortunately, none of the number actually fell too far off the sheet.
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Mass. registry of deeds require a minumum 3/4″ margin around the sheet, no text, no linework. Our borders are offset 3/4″ from each paper sizes edge.
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Norman’s ROS drawings do look good, but a border tells you that you have the entire drawing, not just a piece of it.
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it’s still best practices to keep content away from the actual paper edges because there aren’t that many printers that can/will go all the way to the edge.
I should note that in my examples there is a border in the .dwg – it’s layer is set to “no plot”. The County Surveyor requires that there be a margin of 1/2″ all around on surveys and a full 1″ on subdivision plats.
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@norman-oklahoma
Thanks for sharing the plats. I love the narrative, particularly the procedure and monument table. I’ve considered providing something similar but it’s such a departure from the normal in NC that I chicken out. I will, however, copy your monument table even if it loses me a seat at the cool PLS table (the one with the brass spittoon and glass ashtray).
Most PLSs I speak with in NC will roll there eyes if you even mention wanting to describe a monument in greater detail than, “EIP”. I’ve had drafters get cursing-mad just because I asked them to label the pipe diameter.
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Those examples do look nice. Clear, concise, and easy to read.
the cool PLS table (the one with the brass spittoon and glass ashtray)
These sound like the people that won’t retire, and refuse to die.
Bad habits and stubborness appear to steel one’s resolve to inflict pain.
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I know borders were required by reviewing agencies at specifc offests and vary by county or town. I like the thought that borders tell you you have the whole drawing. I think of borders as the frame on a work of art.
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