Understanding the Basement Plan Scale and Building Size Ratios

Analyzing Scale Ratios for Basement Plan Drawings

Delve into the complexities of architectural planning with a detailed examination of a basement plan, its features, and the unique scaling requirements it presents. Acquire an understanding of how floor plans are developed, the importance of keynotes, legend, and revision information, as well as the role of scale in architectural renderings from this informative content.

Key Insights

  • The article offers an elaborated look into the various features of an architectural plan, including keynotes, revision information, and legends that help in understanding the details of a construction plan.
  • Scaling is a crucial aspect of architectural drawings, with the example demonstrating the unique requirements of fitting a building on a 22 by 34 sheet of paper, which led to the use of an unusual scale of 3/16ths of an inch.
  • An insight into the concept of scale in architectural drawings is provided, explaining how different scales like a quarter of an inch and an eighth of an inch represent the building's size when printed on paper, thus impacting the overall presentation and understanding of the plan.

Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.

Hello, let's continue on. You can see that I am back on the basement plan. And again, we have our A2.2 sheet.

We have our revision information. We have our keynotes. We have the bubbles that are in this area that are saying that we made modifications to the drawing with the delta number that reflects back on the revision date.

We have our notes in this area. We have our legend, which is showing us information such as wall types and so on and so forth. And again, we're showing the solid walls as our continuous studs.

We have our masonry walls with the hashes through them. We have our net pattern over here for the double stud walls. If I zoom into the bottom right, you can see that I'm showing it's the lower floor plan.

You can see that the scale is 3/16 of an inch. Now, this is relatively unusual to have scales such as 3/16 of an inch. But we had some requirements.

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The requirements were we had to fit the building on a 22" × 34" sheet of paper. The building would have been too big to fit on the drawing at 1/4 of an inch. It would have shown too small if we'd said 1/8 of an inch.

We used 3/16 of an inch, which is halfway between 1/4 of an inch and 1/8 of an inch. And let's just talk about scale again. That if I have a drawing that's 1/4 of an inch represents a foot, that means that when I print the drawings one to one, that 1/4 of an inch represents 12 inches, which means that 1/4 of an inch represents a foot.

So, the building at 1/4 of an inch equals a foot. So, 1/4 of an inch is to 12. We cross multiply, we get 1 to 48, meaning a building that is drawn at 1/4 of an inch equals a foot is 1/48 of real size when printed on a piece of paper.

So, 1/4 of an inch equals a foot means a 1/4 of an inch represents 12 inches, which means that one inch represents four feet. So that's 1/4 inch. A 1/8 of an inch means a 1/8 of an inch represents a foot.

So, an eighth is to 12,1 is to 96. So again, a 1/4-inch drawing shows a building at 1/48 of real size. A 1/8-inch drawing represents a building at 1/96 of real size.

And so we're halfway in between.

Al Whitley

AutoCAD and Blueprint Reading Instructor

Al was the Founder and CEO of VDCI | cadteacher for over 20 years. Al passed away in August of 2020. Al’s vision was for the advancement and employment of aspiring young professionals in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industries.

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