Drawing formats

We are slowly merging two companies together. One has “DO NOT SCALE DRAWING” as part of the drawing template/format. One does not. How many of you are still adding that phrase on your drawings?

It isn’t on ours.

A related question is how many people are left that even could scale a drawing, and how long since it would have been considered acceptable practice?

If all necessary dimensions are on the drawing, why should someone try to scale it?

Not on ours either.

I think according to ASME Y14.5 that all drawings should have that note.

I am also curious if anyone still has the sheet size on their drawings. It seems unnecessary given that most prints are delivered in digital formats these days, and you can’t control what size sheet they print it on.

I have both in my title block, because when I created our first print I copied something that looked generic and industry standard.

We have sheet size, which I found helpful as long as it isn’t the most bold thing in the title block. It looks like ASME Y14.1-2005 says to have the sheet size. (That’s what I have a copy of)

It didn’t talk about the note “DO NOT SCALE DRAWING”.

A drawing wouldn’t be a drawing without that old time note on it.

Drawings, well I’m actually doing some at the moment. First time in over 4 years, everyone else didn’t want them anymore.

Yes i have it on drawings and i see it on many that i receive. Thankfully. I also include sheet size on drawings. This is also a vital bit of information when other information is missing to help one resolve issues. Just because you don’t see a point it in… doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful when its photocopied 8 times, screenshot, saved into a .jpg and then printed out and “scanned” in and 30 years late your have to make a component on it, doesn’t mean its not helpful.

I’m confused by your answer. Are you saying you have “do not scale” on your drawings, and then saying that knowing the sheet size is helpful if you need to scale the drawing?

I’ve got both size and scale on our drawing in this format:
image.png
Also in the TB states CAD GENERATED DRAWING, DO NOT SCALE as well as IF IN DOUBT, ASK!

You also have the UOS note often on scale.

Don’t be confused. Scaling is sometimes required to get an idea of an assembly or part when one is deciphering a drawing. The note is for when you need to verify something other then just gaining comprehension of a drawing’s scale at first blush. i.e. to get actual required sizes one would follow the note and ask but is not required when one is simply wrapping their head around a complex or unclear drawing. This is also greatly used when, as i mentioned, people often duplicate drawings or have had them for long periods by those that care very little for retaining quality and/or when scales are excluded due to providing only certain areas of a full drawing and not the tittleblock etc Having a drawing sheet’s size listed is yet another bit of information that takes nothing to include but can mean a lot in many scenarios.

I know you are probably trying to create a “gotchya” by implying that i’m putting both on a drawing then contradicting it but that is completely short sighted on your behalf because you can create drawings with “DO NOT SCALE” and also receive drawings from many others without the note and having a drawing’s sheet size is immensely helpful. So both can be true at the same time. But, as mentioned, even when the note exists on drawings, scaling can often be helpful to gain understanding and comprehension of complex drawings.

We have a note in the TB “CAD Drawing - Do Not Scale”. We don’t put sheet size or scale on the print. Last we only use “A” and “B” size drawing templates. Been this way since the mid 90s.

Reasoning I believe is once 11 x 17 printers became common in the mid to late 90s, our blueprint room went away and all drawings were viewed and printed from an internal system in “TIFF” format. We had a few “C” and “D” drawings and when printed on 11x17 they were hard to read, so gradually they were all replaced.

Sheet size was redundant as we only now had “A” portrait drawings and “B” landscape drawings and its easy to distinguish.

Regarding scale on the print, out factory preferred 1 sheet drawings when possible so we had to sometimes cram a lot information into one page. This meant scaling the views to non standard scales to make stuff fit. So a scale of 1:5.5 would be more confusing than helpful.

As long you include a single dimension on your drawing its no point to pollute the paper with scale and sheet size.
Standard scale for views. . Its just dumb…

As i see it, the goal with drawing is just to give a clear view as possible over the object.

Only use black on everything… profile dimension text ..
Holy jesus ..

By the way .. how many if you in this thread is using sw?

1 Like

We’ve combined SCALE & Sheet size like this… I think it works well:

Just curious, does anyone use that information, and if so, how?

We haven’t had sheet size or a scale on our drawings for 30 years and no one has ever asked for it.

1 Like

Australian standards specify scale & sheet size it to be on the drawing, for some reason.
Some people (my Director, for one) still use scale for paper layout purposes.

Standards can be slow to change. In some industries I could see some value to having scale, especially with large format drawings.

Sheet size seems obsolete. The computer programs know what the sheet size is. I feel like this goes back to having drawings on microfilm.

1 Like

I understand about your thinking sheet size is irrelevant, but we normally use A3 format, sometimes A1, but once in a while print A4 to bring to meetings/portability and the like…
I think both both scale and sheet size are useful.

I think its useful having them to create drawings a useful, I just don’t get what having the sheet size notated on the drawing titleblock helps with. You can print to whatever sheet size you want.

Scale might be slightly more useful to show in industries with really large sheet formats and they print the drawing to scale and expect fabricators to use an old style scale ruler to measure stuff. Otherwise I just look at the parts dimensions to get an idea of scale.