Drafting with non-standard scales?

Anything is fine so long as it is accurate.  220,440, 660

Wouldn't recommend 17 or any other prime number.

I was the same as you, if it couldn't be scaled with an engineers scale, then it wasn't acceptable. But I have also noticed maps in 'non-standard' scales, and lately have embraced it. So infrequently now does someone ever have a hardcopy of a map, much less put a a physical scale on it. I'd rather just draw the best map I can, one that comfortably fits the page and leaves plenty of room for annotations and detail, on top of just dimensioning anything I think might be useful.

Anyone who might need to scale something is likely using a PDF reader with that functionality built in. My scale could be 1 Nautical Mile = 22 Hands and it wouldn't matter.

I have always used traditional drafting scales with my drawings: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100, 200, 300.  I am starting to see more and more plats with non-standard scales.  Today I saw a recorded plat at 1” = 150’.

I get it.  I could use my engineering scale at 50 and multiple by 3.  But just because you can, does that mean we should? 

How about you?  Should I modernize my way of thinking?

Yes, even saving a single piece of paper contributes in a small way to the prevention of the looming environments disaster. Think one sheet instead of two.

The State and Municipalities only want your D-size drawing on a size they can print at thier desk.  So if you draw at 1”=33.33’, they get 1”=100’.

Anybody ever draw a map with metric measurements?  With a scale of 1:300?

I'm an advocate for 1"=80' 

Somebody should dig up the thread where Kent showed off his drawings with one scalar going Northy Southy and another for Easty Westy. 

I would love a 1"=15' Scale.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with 1"=150'.  As said, you can use a standard engineer's scale to figure it

It is sort of a shame that the scales on the standard six-sided engineer's scale were not chosen to be closer to a geometric progression to more evenly spread out the differences between scales.  For instance, the factor of 2 in going from 10 to 20 (therefore the desire to use 1 inch = 150 feet) and the factor of 1.67 in going from 60 to 100 (which creates a demand for 1 inch = 80 feet).

By strict geometric progression, the one-sixth root of 10 is a bit less than 1.47 and the scales would be 10, 14.68, 21.54, 31.62, 46.42, and 68.13.

More practically, how about 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, and 70?  That way the largest increase is 1.56 between 45 and 70.

It will never happen.

GB

Typically I use the standard scales.

That being said, I remember putting together an exhibit for a local university presentation and to show everything on the 18x24 poster board, to include the university's border, I ended up using a scale of 1"=150'. At the time, I wasn't concerned with scale, I just needed to get everything on that specific size of paper. My PM at the time gave me a hard time about it but like others have said, it's at scale so in the end it didn't matter.

Since then, I pay more attention to scale and try to stick with the standards.

want your D-size drawing on a size they can print at thier desk

Do any reproductions (other than contact printed bluelines) actually preserve a known ratio?

I always want a standard drawn scale so that an engineer's scale can be used.  But I come from a day when people actually used scales and hard copy (and I still do).  So maybe a standard scale isn't as important since people aren't using print and scales like they used to (electronic, PDF, computer image, etc.). 

I suppose the question as I see it is: Would I rather have a standard scale that may be more difficult to read when printed -OR- a non standard scale that "fills the page" and, therefore, is easier to read?

Greatest scale ever!!!!

1"=1320'

I honestly think it has been about 8-10 years since I both printed out and used a scale measurement on a map to obtain a distance.

I really, really hate taking data that would look far better at a non-standard scale and whacking it into a standard scale, ending up with either the "postage stamp" or "kids cartoon" look.

Not to mention that standard PDF readers will let users plug in the scale and then measure to their hearts' content. If I need to pull anything more than one or two measurements off a PDF, I will just export to JPG, drop into CAD, use ALIGN to position & scale, and trace/measure away.

@dave-lindell asked about metric maps. I'll generalize to any drawings. As a professional, I would find myself drawing, or ordering the computer to draw, a portion of an integrated circuit at a scale of around 1000:1. In words, 1 millimeter on the paper equals 1 micrometer in the real world.

I remember gasping when our lab tech told me about the cost of a 1 meter Starrett steel rule for the occasions when dimensions were scaled off a paper or Mylar drawing, rather than found electronically. ($308 from Starrett today) It made sense in the days when graphics displays were too expensive to put in every engineer's office, so you had to go to a terminal room to work with them. Engineers would scale from paper in between trips to the terminal room.

For a short while in the 1970s. IBM tried to pretend that 25 mm was exactly equal to 1 inch, and called it pseudometric. By the time I arrived in in the late 70s pseudometric was considered a filthy obscenity. All engineering was strictly metric.

I still have my Alvin triangular scale, No. 740 PM, "METRIC ARCHITECT", which was somewhat useful but required mental gymnastics since it was intended for the real world object being larger than the paper world object.

Please let me summarize my understanding of triangular drafting scales so you can tell me what I missed or got wrong.

Architect scales are intended for drawing things the size of smallish buildings, when the real world workers are using measuring tapes graduated in feet and inches, and fractions of an inch such as 1/4. When the object being drawn is large enough that it's impractical to read anything smaller than a foot off the drawing, these scales become useless.

Engineer scales are intended for machinery and other parts designed in inches and decimal parts of an inch, where the real world object is larger than the drawing. Since the scale manufacturers of the world have ignored US land surveyors, surveyors adapt these by using scales such as 1 inch = 100 feet, and using decimal feet.

Metric scales would be great if only people used metric.

@dave-lindell Yes. I did a few boundary surveys on property owned by The Smithsonian Institution and they wanted the surveys in metric, because...science.

If the scale is 70, use the 10 scale and multiply by 7.  If the scale is 120, use the 40 scale and multiply by 3.  Always remember to put the decimal in the correct place.  That is something we oldtimers had to master when using slide rules.