North arrow can point anywhere

just make it look good

i was at a review yesterday where the student had drawn an east arrow on their model.

I was taught left - when text can't be horizontally oriented it should be placed as if the left side of the sheet is the new top. [like titleblocks n stuff]

Left is Up if Up isn't up...

but i agree - just make it look good

la_la is right. You should only have to turn the paper to the right so all the text - IF there is any text aligned with the north-up convention - is aligned on the sheet.

Never have text facing opposite directions on a single sheet. Some vertical and some horizontal is fine, but not opposing each other...

...if you know what I mean. This stuff is hard to describe but super-easy to diagram!

Typically I follow the standard of make it look good and it doesn't matter what the standard is, but I heard some people arguing in the office, and I was wondering if there was a standard.

in the antipodes, do they use a south arrow?

According to Glenn E. Wiggins AIA in "A Manual of Construction Documentation" the north arrow should be "up or to the right". Granted the book is a little dated (Copyright 1989).

Sometimes drawings are required to be submitted with the "front" of the building, or the "main entrance", or the "primary street facade", or some other specific thing facing the bottom of the sheet (can be zoning, building official, government agency, university planning office, etc. that may mandate something like that.) In that case the north arrow will have to comply with however that lands the building on the sheet.
Also some firms' standards dictate that the main entrance is always pointing toward the bottom of the page. So same situation there.

If there's no issue of that sort then it's up to you - most will make north either "up" or "left", but it should be the readability of the plan that dictates (meaning which way is your client going to understand the plan best? what's his/her usual experience of entering the building? which way is the obvous "front"? I'd face that down whenever possible.)

tk that map is making me dizzy. North is up because we designated "up" to be called "north", right? So that map is upside down.

As an antipodean, I'm glad to see a correctly oriented map of the wordl for once. We don't use a south arrow - but remember that for us, north-facing is sunny! Don't make your house point south... brr.

Wait, agfa....the map is upside down, unless you show your south arrows pointing up on your drawing sheets....right?

When i ws drafting the the 2005 Solar Decathlon CDs, I used a "South Arrow" because with regards to PV orientation and Passive Solar, South is more relevant than North

There's not a lot of land in the Southern Hemi., huh? Why is that?

should you ever get a comission for a building located on the north pole (santa's hideout?) then you couldn't even use a north arrow...you'd have to use a south arrow and they would have to point in all directions.

and, of course, vice versa for the south pole

sgs23: thank you for making my day.

In Navajo culture, east is up. Or so I hear.

Puddles, on the north or south poles, you would have to use the Standard physics directional Vector Head/Tail Symbols ;)

North is up because of the Northern Star

North is up because global travel, and globes, and astronomy, and space travel were all discovered in the northern hemisphere, thus north earned it's place in the organizational hierarchy of all universal thought.
We might be upside-down the whole time as far as we know, but what we do know is there is an axis around which the earth spins and a magnetic field to which the compass (invented in the northern hemisphere) is naturally attracted. The northern star may have something to do with that magnetic spot, but I dont know. The idea of celestial bodies and illustration of those "theories" was best suited on a canvas much like the sky is rendered in most everything, including photos. North is up, the Northern star is up..the sun is up there too.....

The southern pole of a compass is attracted to the south just as much as strongly as the northern one points north.

yeah, we don't actually point our maps that way, lb! But the sun really does come from the north.

I've always wondered if the natural course of human migration was linked to the deire to approach sunlit views as opposed to having the glare of the sun in your eyes. But really, it's more aout shade and shadow and plant life sustainability and the propesity for plants to grow where ther is also shade? Crazy.

unless your drawings are on an easel or on the monitor, the north arrow is actually pointing forward.

wow architects are very confused about earth's place in solar system...who knew?

north has nothing to do with compas btw. magnetic north is not at the north pole and moves contiuously. the poles flip every 20-30000 years too and there are times when the world is just a mess of magnetic confusion...

we typically put building on orthogonal grid and north arrow faces whatever direction it needs to. this makes easier to draft. we have to be careful of north arrow cuz no building can be built without shadow calculations (which sets building height), and we also have to submit proof of natural lighting for inhabited rooms...which is good thing in my book. maybe why most homes in japan have half decent solar access in spite of rubbish design.

anyway, the point is not the direction on a map its what you do with it that matters. only anal mc-anally actually gives a shit about how it sits on a plan...

Right, agfa - I knew about southern/northern exposure difference in the two hemispheres. Just wasn't sure if you were joking or not about the map orientation...

Interestingly, I arrived to the office today to find some schematic plans my partner sketched over the survey plans I drew last week. He oriented the sheets with south up - WTF? He went to architecture school, why the hell would he do that?!? I have a really hard time orienting myself to his plans, will have to turn them the right way for the meeting.

Mystery solved, but I'm not sure it's the best solution; you guys be the judge.

Drawings are oriented with south up because the major work we are doing - kitchen renovation - is on the north side of the house. So the most "active" portion of the drawing is now at the bottom of the sheet. Which makes a little sense.

Upstairs we are renovating the entire plan. The two sheets absolutely must be oriented the same way, obviously. But south up makes less sense on sheet 2.

Usually I orient the plans on the sheets such that the front facade or main street face of the building is at the bottom of the sheet. I think this is how clients/building users are most likely to see the plan of the building in their minds. North be damned.
The only reasons I would face north up is if that happened to be where it landed (because the front facade is the south facade), or because the building is not directly on a street AND does not have an obvious front or main facade, in which case north=up would be as sensible an organizational logic as any.

in space there are no directions that matter, not even up and down.

on the ocean the ship becomes the lodestone from which all directions are defined. maybe house plans should have starboard and aft instead of north and south...

i don't mind what way the building faces on plan; reality concerns me more. this may be because the japanese language can be written left to right, right to left, and up to down without anyone blinking or thinking about how to read. page order can be front to back or back to front too. good training for understanding relativity.

westerners are immediately confused if the language don't fit the format they/we are used to...

its all cultural.

do architects in the southern hemisphere draw south as up?

"do architects in the southern hemisphere draw south as up?"

no.

mostly it is with north to the top of the sheet, unless the drawing doesn't fit and must be orientated a different direction.

most master plans and larger site plans are almost always with north to the top of the sheet.

"The notion that north should always be up and east at the right was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). "Perhaps this was because the better-known places in his world were in the northern hemisphere, and on a flat map these were most convenient for study if they were in the upper right-hand corner," historian Daniel Boorstin opines. Mapmakers haven't always followed Ptolemy; during the Middle Ages, Boorstin notes, maps often had east on top--whence the expression "to orient." But north prevailed over the long haul. By the time Southern Hemispheroids had become numerically significant enough to bitch, the north-side-up convention was too well established to change."
From Cecil Adams 'The Straight Dope'
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_159.html

So, if you believe that explanation, blame the pesky Egyptians

hoping I can add this before mdler does....my north arrow always points up. And there are pills to ensure yours does too!!

techno, what is your attitude regarding the size the north arrow should be relative to the plan - does bigger = better?

I am a confident architect, and have no problems displaying a small if not tiny north arrow because I am not trying to compensate for my...cough cough greatness

do southern site plans need viagra to get their arrows up?

I'm guessing North is Up because that's the way it was on the original sundials. If north was down, you would cast a shadow on the sundial thereby making it useless?

But you can still read a sundial if you look at it from the north, facing south--so south is "up."

North is up for the same reason that we number years from 3-5 years after Jesus was born.

Or that we use 12 months of varying lengths, rather than 5 months of 73 days each.

Or why a circle has 360 degrees instead of any other number.

Etc, etc

A circle has 360 degrees because the babylonians counted in base-12.

Hemispheroids, didn't know that was a real word