Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Drafting with non-standard scales?
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Anybody ever draw a map with metric measurements? With a scale of 1:300?
Metric? Yes. 1:300? I’m not sure about that.
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Unitless scales are great. My impression is that surveyors shun them because they are associated with GIS maps, and (civil) engineers simply don’t know any better.
Not to mention that even if we show a unitless scale, even though it may conform to statutory and contractual standards reviewers will ding us if they see 1:240 rather than 1″=20′. To them it’s not the same thing, even though it is literally equal.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
I work in an office with 25± technical staff and I don’t think that there is an engineering scale in the room. Nobody who has learned to “draft” in the last 20 years, minimum, has ever done it with pencil, pen, and paper.
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depends on the audience. MAPS are the realm of geographers and cartographers. GIS people fall into that group. It’s Interesting that surveyor and engineering types have any comments at all because it’s just a drawing and not a map, but the overlap that’s occurred had created an Interesting dialogue. Why did/has the engineer’s scale become the standard? in a drawing plan set absolutely. for a map? get bent. Bring it. I’m in both camps, and do my best to not be hypocritical, and I’ll suffer with my comments when I cross that line.
I made a map with a scale of 1″ equals 555′ due to the request of the audience that wanted it. I’m just doing what I was asked and not Invoking some unregulated and subjective opinion based decision.
wait…today is Thursday? crap I though it was Monday.
must be fall out from the SWAT takedown I had to back away from in my job site yesterday. That was interesting…..
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Unitless scales are great. My impression is that surveyors shun them because they are associated with GIS maps, and (civil) engineers simply don’t know any better.
Not to mention that even if we show a unitless scale, even though it may conform to statutory and contractual standards reviewers will ding us if they see 1:240 rather than 1″=20′. To them it’s not the same thing, even though it is literally equal.
beat me to it.
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Non-Standard Scale sizes irks me a little bit, but it doesn’t bother me too much when I have to deal with them. What has been a bigger issue in the past is different professions providing pdf plans that need to be printed on different size sheets such as ANSI vs ARCH. Do you guys usually note what paper size your survey should be printed on within the survey as a note? I’ve seen some people print the project file path on the side margin and it will have the size within its naming convention, but can’t recall it being actually noted somewhere on the survey itself.
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I used to be a stickler for standard scales but with all the advancements in PDF programs I don’t care what the scale is. I can calibrate any file with a dimension in about 4 mouse clicks and set the scale to whatever it works out to be.
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Before online GIS, the county kept large paper maps ( 3’x3+’) in large hanging files. The standard scale was 1″=330′. They did not of course have “layers” but did have much valuable historical info. When the county was transitioning to online maps, They were going to dispose of the paper maps that were at the tax office, and I was able to obtain the complete set for my entire county.
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Do you guys usually note what paper size your survey should be printed on within the survey as a note?
I think I used to do that when we had to print out surveys, sign & stamp them, then scan them back in again. Scanner would produce some screwy page sizes if we didn’t align the paper correctly. But like the physical scaling, that was about a decade ago. Haven’t scanned a full size survey since 2012 or so.
All the PDF readers I am familiar with show the page size of the file, so if it was produced correctly there will be no question what the sheet size is.
(“Produced correctly” being the operative term. I despise using “plot extents, fit to paper” that some of my previous coworkers would use. Use the right size sheet, the right driver, and plot to a window that is the exact size of the sheet to be printed.)
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman -
@gordon-svedberg
Our County had each layer on a seperate clear sheet. Thus, you could put a set on a large light table to see what was considered to be the final product. The trick was to get each layer (sheet) in exactly the same position as the others.
That was how I was able to convince the mapper one year that they had totally messed up my evaluations for several agricultural tracts I owned. He eventually discovered he had screwed up an entire township. In my case he had used Range 19 aerials showing soil categories with vastly differing use values from mine in Range 20. I went from having some very poor, rocky soils to far better and productive soils. An increase in the range of five percent would have been expected. Some areas were raised on the order of 50 percent by mistake.
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@john-putnam Although in theory representative fractions are unitless, if one wishes to take a dimension off a drawing with a physical scale you hold in your hand, the divisions on the physical scale must be compatible with the units you will use in the field, such as feet or meters. I can’t think of a representative scale where physical scales are commercially available that would let me easily read feet or meters off the same drawing.
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I use the standard scales 10 20 30 40 50 60 100 200 400. On rare occasions i have done 80 and 120 as you could still use the standard scale 40 and 60
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@holy-cow TTADB. Isn’t that what they were called. Had to do those in the USMC . When we went through a cartography course Computing forest density and other things like slopes etc. Everything had to be done by hand and computations before we were taught the fancy software. Like ESRI etc. But I am not complaining because it gave me a foundation that has helped in many aspects and a better understanding of what products i produced and what to look for in QA/QC process. Have to love the old Defensive Mapping School for all of that knowledge.
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When printing maps to PDF for lay people (such as Fire Investigators) I don’t print a scale on the map, 1 they could print it out at some odd size and 2 they don’t know what an engineer’s scale is anyway. I just put a scale bar on it so then it is correct no matter how they print it to paper.
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Somebody should dig up the thread where Kent showed off his drawings with one scalar going Northy Southy and another for Easty Westy.
This is the way most profiles are presented, vertical exaggeration. I can’t imagine how it could be useful on a plan of any kind though.
dd -
@john-putnam Although in theory representative fractions are unitless, if one wishes to take a dimension off a drawing with a physical scale you hold in your hand, the divisions on the physical scale must be compatible with the units you will use in the field, such as feet or meters. I can’t think of a representative scale where physical scales are commercially available that would let me easily read feet or meters off the same drawing.
on a “metric scaled” map you could hold your surveyor tape on it and at, say 1:1000 (1mm=1m), .01′ would equal 10′.
A 15 min (?) USGS Quad map is typically at 1:24000, not a smoothly scaled dwg using a metric engr scale, but equal to 1″ = 2000′ [1″=24000″]
dd -
At my last government employment I had a German spring scale that had every fifth or so coil painted with fluorescent paint. You could slide the spring and lock it to any infinite scale you desired. Germans were brilliant. Too bad they believed most of what leadership told them.
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I just draft at the scale 1:1, units be damned. I can plot later at whatever scale makes sense for whatever layout fits the bill. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn anything scaled out of the gate. One of my old mentors would draft his field sketches in the field book to scale and they were works of art. I just don’t have the patience.
Willy -
To me, it all depends on your definition of a standard scale. Why would 100 be a standard scale, but not 120? Either way, you have to multiply. I can do math in my head so multiplying by 2 or 3 or 4 isn’t any more difficult than multiplying by 10. There’s a big difference between 100 scale and 200 scale, so if I can use something between those, I have been and will continue to use whatever scale works best to fill a page.
Of course, I never actually scale anything. Not in the last few decades. I think I have a small scale in my briefcase and a full size one somewhere in or on my desk.
Oh, and I used to use the aforementioned 1″=1320′ on every project I ever did in Houston, though it was always labeled as 1/4 mile on the vicinity map.
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The good thing is most people have a cell phone if they’re unable to multiply or divide by 2 or maybe as high as 5. Our educational system is graduating people who can’t multiply by 1. Lol
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