Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Scale (Large)

Anonymous
Not applicable
This is a somewhat "off-topic" inquiry. Working on a non-architectural related project for which I need to draw some parts. I tried to set the scale actually enlarge a drawing, but it seems impossible. AKA I would like to draw a small object at an enlarged scale, say 5:1 or 10:1.

Does anyone know how we can change the scale settings to allow this?

ArchiCAD seems to be made for architectural drawings only, aka only allow reduced scales.

Thanks ahead,
PB
5 REPLIES 5
Anonymous
Not applicable
I don't know if I understand exactly, but have you tried;
Ctrl K
lec
Anonymous
Not applicable
I can resize my drawing, but then I have to do a mental multiplication or division each time I need to measure something or have to manually input dimensions as the actual scale is not a "true" scale, the XYZ dimensions are not the actual dimensions.

Basically, ArchiCAD allows for a drawing to be a fraction of its original size which is what most Architectural drawings typically are, but it does not allow to work at multiplied scales.

The object I am working on is very small, working in milimeters, so I am trying to draw it 10x its original size (yet looking for a scale that would allow XYZ coordinates to be accurate), but ArchiCAD does not allow such scale. It allows 1:10, 1:20, etc... But it does not allow 10:1, basically, it does not allow for scales above 1:1 if you see what I mean.

For now, I've done the "resized" and enlarged the original drawing 10x, but I have to mentally do the math constantly and manually adjust each dimension string.

Don't know if this clarifies my problem somewhat!?

Thanks!
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
Patrick:

You still work at real world dimensions (in this case the drawing window scale can be set to 1:1). You cannot set it to anything greater than that, as the scale dialog box does not accept the decimal point, but you can zoom in quite far (there is an option for 1000% in the zoom pop up list, I don't know if the maximum zoom is a consequence of the application, hardware, or project). For output though you have more options, a drawing in a layout will accept the decimal point, so a drawing could be set to 1:0.1 to get a drawing 10 times larger than the original.

HTH,

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Anonymous
Not applicable
You can set the drawing scale in layouts to greater than 1:1. Just set them to 1:0,1. (At least it just worked for me - first time I've tried.)

If for any reason this doesn't work for you. Just set the working units to cm and think of them as mm.

OR...

Work at real dimensions, print to PDF, place the PDF and blow it up by 1000%.
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks for the ideas Matthew!... Unfortunately, AC does not allow a 1:0.1 scale ...it does not take decimals and automatically reverts to 1:1 scale.

The addition of blowing up the drawing could be of interest as well, but the problem is that the level of precision of AC when working in mm (milimeters) becomes limited. Splines show up as segments, etc...

Guess it's meant as an Architectural CAD software (hence the name).

Anyone else with any experience/inputs on this issue welcome!

Aloha,
Patrick