From the course: SketchUp for Architecture: Details

Understand scale and appropriate sale - SketchUp Tutorial

From the course: SketchUp for Architecture: Details

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Understand scale and appropriate sale

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- [Instructor] Chapter 2-01, understanding scale. Understanding scale can be confusing. And I think the reason it gets confusing is simply because we all use CAD these days, and we very rarely set up bits of paper to draw our things on. Now, fortunately for me, I can understand scale much easier than new students, because I come from the era where I was drawing a lot of stuff on bits of paper. And, because of that, I had finite amount of space to play with, so, I would usually use the A0 size or the A1 size. Okay, so these are the standard sort of page sizes I would be dealing with, and that that would give me sort of a real estate area of 841mm by 1189mm, the equivalent in inches is there. Now, if you're from the states, or use the ANSI system, then the ANSI E, which is equivalent to A0, the ANSI D, is equivalent to A1, these are the sorts of sizes that you had on your sheet. So then, you would have something to draw, whether it was a building, or a housing layout or something, and you would decide what sort of scale you could fit the things on there. Now, often, it wouldn't be a problem, if there were small, domestic projects, then it would fit quite nicely on an A1, at the scale of 1 to 50, for example, or the equivalent would be 1 to 48, which is a quarter of an inch to a foot. So, it wasn't necessarily a problem. When you got to a bigger sort of project, and you needed to fit more information on, then you might need to either drop the scale down to maybe 1 to 100, or increase the page size. These were the sorts of things that would determine, for us, what sort of scale we could draw things at. Though, not withstanding that, we also have to think about the amount of detail we need it to show. Now, if we were limited to a scale of 1 to 100, then we couldn't show as much information as we could at 1 to 50, because we were using pens, and rulers, and stencils and all sorts of other things, and we simply didn't have the dexterity to create all of the detail required, maybe, at 1 to 100, that we'd be able to show at something like 1 to 50. Okay, so we were limited in that respect. Now, let's go over to the next page and see "What will fit on my paper?" Page, and, if I had an A1 size, then if I was drawing something at full scale, which I very rarely did, cause I didn't deal with, sort of, machine parts or product bits, then the amount of stuff you could fit on there would be 594 x 841 on A1. And these are the equivalent sizes for the ANSI D, which is a similar sort of page. So, again, as I said, I would think about the right scale for something, and it would usually be a 1 to 50, or 1 to 100, for most buildings, and then, that would tell me how much I can actually fit on there, if the building was 29 by 42 meters. Now, often, they were never that big, so 1 to 50 would be fine. So, I understood, quite early on, all about setting out a drawing, and what I could fit on there, and I knew my limitations when it came to drawing stuff. The trouble, these days, is that on CAD, you can draw anything, any size you like, and at any level of detail. So, that poses another question, what level of information do you show at specific scales? Okay, and again, let's think about drawing these things by hand. So, next page, 1 to 200, this is a little exercise that I set for students, and it's all about what we can draw really quickly at different scales. Okay so, this was the building that I chose, I think it was not far away from where I work, so I took a picture of that, and then, basically said, in about five minutes, draw what you can, at a scale of 1 to 200. So, 1 to 200, the building was about 25 meters and I think is about 20 meters from top to bottom, from the chimney stack to this very bottom bit, so that would fit nicely onto an A3 sheet. So, once we drew that, then the questions were what sort of level of detail could we show, how much information could we show on this at that sort of scale. The next bit was to draw it onto 100. Okay so, obviously, at 1 to 100, it's now twice as wide and twice as high. So, you can't fit the same stuff onto the same piece of paper. But, what you can do, is show it at a higher level of detail. Okay, more information about the windows and the doors, more information on the chimney stacks, more information on the timber, et cetera. And, If we move through the scales, you can see now this red box is getting smaller and smaller, honing in on certain things, so we can draw much less, at a 1 to 20 scale, but we can show a huge amount more of information. And it kind of takes the same amount of time, or maybe longer, at this sort of level, cause we're focusing in on the detail. As opposed drawing all of it in a sort of general sense, we can now really focus in on certain bits. And the final bit, was at full scale, we could draw the door number, and the door knocker. It got the students to think about what sort of level of information you can show at certain scales, and then, whether it was appropriate to the output that you required. Now, often, 1 to 50, or 1 to 100, would be sufficient. This level of detail might be fine. Okay? 1 to 200 might be fine as well, depends what you need to show. But, if someone wanted to know all about that door knocker, then, 1 to 200 scale is not going to cut it. It needs to be something like this. Okay, so, hopefully, that's explained a little bit about scale, it all does depend on output size, so if you know how big your piece of paper is that you're finally going to print it or plot it to, then you stand half a chance of getting it right.

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