I was hoping to do some informal polling amongst the group here.
As more and more Cities have gone to accepting electronic submittals for permit review, it seems that graphic scales have become more and more ubiquitous on architects drawings--particularly on construction documents. The obvious reason being that the AHJ has an easy way to validate any dimensions he/she might want to verify on the pdf.
My question to the forum is: has your office moved to using graphic scales for your drawing title? And if so, does it still read 1/x" = 1'-0" somewhere in the title? Our office currently uses a graphic scale at every drawing--with no mention of the actual scale. It may be silly, but I like being able to intuitively glance at the title and quickly know what scale the drawing is. My preference would be to include both the scale and the text--others argue that the text becomes a potential liability.
I fully understand the beauty of the graphic scale. No matter what size it's printed, the drawing always has a reference for determining scale. True also is that once that drawing is printed to a different scale, the text reading 1/x" = 1'-0" no longer applies. But for seemingly forever, architects have issued CD's with only the text under the title.
senjohnblutarsky
Feb 16, 21 11:31 am
There should be a graphic scale on the sheet and a numeric scale on the view. You can't guarantee what medium someone will be using during the construction/review process.
Belt and suspender.
mightyaa
Feb 16, 21 12:41 pm
Agreed. Had a weird claim on a lawsuit recently. GC used bluebeam and used the proclaimed drawing scale. That scale was incorrect and because it happened on the mechanical/electrical plans, there were no dimensions. So their take-offs were something like 20% off on the short side. Essentially a drafting error; like they zoomed or plotted at a random number to fit on the page then showed the scale as 1:10. As architects, we put they shouldn't scale off the drawings, but on the flipside, we also know they have to do that to do their own takeoffs and there are plenty of software packages to do that. In that case, if they had put on a graphic scale, it would have been easier to detect something was off...
natematt
Feb 16, 21 3:55 pm
Our firm standard is to not use graphic scales. Our standard general notes indicate first and foremost that the drawings are not to be scaled by the contractor, and that they are supposed to ask the architect for clarification when required....
Even when we give out cad backgrounds to the contractor we still have a strongly worded form they have to sign that basically says, we're not responsible for this and you have to verify everything. Which... they will still turn around and be like, hey this isn't right, when hey themselves take something and fk it up. It's truly incredible.
Only time we ever give drawing for the contractor to build from are very specific. Too complicated to reasonably make them re-draw or more effort than it is worth for us to annotate sort of things. And then it's usually a very purged cad or rhino file on that one specific thing.
You can mess up a graphic scale just like anything else. Which people will. Never had a complaint yet from a planchecker, and contractors will typically just run a dimension calibrated off of a provided dimension and ask for confirmation. Which.... seem to be wrong enough that I feel like the approach is well deserved...
I was hoping to do some informal polling amongst the group here.
As more and more Cities have gone to accepting electronic submittals for permit review, it seems that graphic scales have become more and more ubiquitous on architects drawings--particularly on construction documents. The obvious reason being that the AHJ has an easy way to validate any dimensions he/she might want to verify on the pdf.
My question to the forum is: has your office moved to using graphic scales for your drawing title? And if so, does it still read 1/x" = 1'-0" somewhere in the title? Our office currently uses a graphic scale at every drawing--with no mention of the actual scale. It may be silly, but I like being able to intuitively glance at the title and quickly know what scale the drawing is. My preference would be to include both the scale and the text--others argue that the text becomes a potential liability.
I fully understand the beauty of the graphic scale. No matter what size it's printed, the drawing always has a reference for determining scale. True also is that once that drawing is printed to a different scale, the text reading 1/x" = 1'-0" no longer applies. But for seemingly forever, architects have issued CD's with only the text under the title.
There should be a graphic scale on the sheet and a numeric scale on the view. You can't guarantee what medium someone will be using during the construction/review process.
Belt and suspender.
Agreed. Had a weird claim on a lawsuit recently. GC used bluebeam and used the proclaimed drawing scale. That scale was incorrect and because it happened on the mechanical/electrical plans, there were no dimensions. So their take-offs were something like 20% off on the short side. Essentially a drafting error; like they zoomed or plotted at a random number to fit on the page then showed the scale as 1:10. As architects, we put they shouldn't scale off the drawings, but on the flipside, we also know they have to do that to do their own takeoffs and there are plenty of software packages to do that. In that case, if they had put on a graphic scale, it would have been easier to detect something was off...
Our firm standard is to not use graphic scales. Our standard general notes indicate first and foremost that the drawings are not to be scaled by the contractor, and that they are supposed to ask the architect for clarification when required....
Even when we give out cad backgrounds to the contractor we still have a strongly worded form they have to sign that basically says, we're not responsible for this and you have to verify everything. Which... they will still turn around and be like, hey this isn't right, when hey themselves take something and fk it up. It's truly incredible.
Only time we ever give drawing for the contractor to build from are very specific. Too complicated to reasonably make them re-draw or more effort than it is worth for us to annotate sort of things. And then it's usually a very purged cad or rhino file on that one specific thing.
You can mess up a graphic scale just like anything else. Which people will. Never had a complaint yet from a planchecker, and contractors will typically just run a dimension calibrated off of a provided dimension and ask for confirmation. Which.... seem to be wrong enough that I feel like the approach is well deserved...