so now we're going to learn how to use the architectural scale you can see there's it's a triangular scale and there are two sides on each face of these triangles and within each side there are multiple scales so these notes these fractions on the ends the numbers on the ends tell you what scale so but just to begin with we're just going to look at the regular ruler because first we have to understand that before we can really understand the scale but the process is the same for trying to understand it so to begin with we know we have 12 inches in one foot and the ruler is marked every inch but just to to make clear how do you break up an inch because you need to understand how that works so that when you're looking at the scale you can figure it out at each different size so if this is one inch and the ruler is designed in a way the scale to make it easier because there are different length lines so if you look the longest lines are at the inches here in the center is the next longest line it divides the one inch into two equal parts so each of those is one half inch within the one-half inch it's divided again so it's a half inch divided by a half and i'm just going to grab a piece of paper here so we can i can do a little bit of math on the side to explain how this works so we had a half inch and we're dividing it in half if we have a half an inch here we're dividing it in half so that's it's already one half of one half so we're going to multiply and that equals one quarter so if you take an inch divide it in half that's a half an inch if you divide that half in half again it's a quarter of an inch and now look at the scale you can see one quarter of one inch which means there are four of these within one inch so one two three four so the first line divided it into two equal parts the next longest line divided that part in again into two equal parts now we have a quarter inch and if we look at the next longest line it's the one in the center here and it divides the quarter inch in half so if you have a quarter of an inch and you multiply it by a half you get 1 8 inch so half of one quarter is one eighth and again if you look at the the ruler there are eight of these within every inch and if you again multiply if you want to divide the eighth inch by half you would multiply it by a half and that gives you 1 16. so you're just constantly dividing an inch in half in half again in half again in half again so each of these spaces on this ruler is 1 16 of an inch and it means one part out of 16 and if you count within every inch there are 16 1 16 inch spaces so this actually is an indication of scale of 1 16 inch and i'll get back to that afterward i just wanted to show you though how the how the foot breaks down into 12 equal inches the inch breaks down into halfs quarters 8 16 and so on so because we have to know that so when we go to now looking at the scale we understand how it works and and the reason for scale is that if you have a room that's 20 feet wide and 12 feet tall if you needed to draw that size room on a piece of paper you would need an actual piece of paper that's 20 feet wide by 12 feet plus extra room around it so that would be full size full scale and the whole reason these architectural scales were developed is so that we could shrink it down and draw in proportion so we want these corners to be 90 degrees which is why we use the tools that we do keeping the horizontal lines and the triangles to keep the vertical lines perpendicular and we want to make sure that we keep the proportion this the scale if the width of this and the width of this we don't want this to be made shorter and this to remain long we want to keep the the proportion of this side to this side so the scale comes in handy because we can shrink it down and use a little mini ruler to measure 12 feet and 20 feet so we're going to now take a look at the scale and i'm going to rotate it around until we see the side that has three inches and one and a half inches and the reason i'm doing this one first is that you can see the ruler so this i i count i consider this a mini ruler on the end so this is one foot at this scale and you can see there's the zero mark and you can count 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. so each of these again the longest line in between the zero and the end that breaks it up into the inches in this case and every side of the scale what the markings mean is different but in this side we can see here's three so that if the next longest line divides that space into three equal parts which is one inch each so this is one inch two inch three inch if you then within the one inch the longest line in the center breaks that into two equal parts so each of these is one half inch within the half inch the next longest line breaks it up into two equal parts so that's one one half times one half so each of these is one quarter and then the quarter inch is divided in half again so on this side of the scale that's one foot but every space in here is one eighth of an inch and what that means is for every three inches on your drawing that means that equals one foot in real size so that's how big a foot is you if you're drawing it three inch equals one foot so three inches on my drawing equals one foot and then if you have to draw something that's two and a half inches it's one two and a half so if i wanted to measure just the inches there that's how i would do it i'm going to come to the other end of the scale and talk about now the inch and a half side so again we have the one little mini ruler it's the shrunk down ruler here and so if you look at the longest lines it separates that into 12 equal parts so each of these spaces is one inch from here to here within each inch the longest line divides that into two equal parts so each of these is a half an inch if you divide the half inch in half again it's a quarter of an inch so at inch and a half equals a foot scale which is half the size of the three inch scale each of these spaces is a quarter of an inch and you can see within one inch there are four spaces so each one is one quarter of an inch so each time you rotate the scale and look at the inches you have to go through this little exercise because here on these two scales and some scales have every inch marked and some have just the three six nine inches marked so again if i needed to measure ten and a half inches i can come right to the nine there's ten there's a half and if i have to do ten and three eighths it's halfway in between the quarter inch and the half inch so i can mark halfway in between two marks on here so that's the way the little mini ruler works and now i want to sort of take a look at the center part so there are lots of marks here with with numbers that are a little could could be confusing especially because there's a 2 here and there's a 2 here but the lines work for both ends of the scale but the numbers don't so if you notice on this side of the scale the 0 is very close to the edge of the ruler and on this side it's further away so the numbers again the ones that line up with the zero that one and that one those numbers are the ones that belong to this end of the ruler and the numbers that are closer to the edge which is this one and this one belong here the markings are fine for both but the numbers don't mean anything and you can see if that's one foot this is one foot this is one foot and if you look the number is zero here and it's two here so this line in the middle is one foot that number don't be deceived by the number just make sure you're reading the numbers that line up with the zero and then you'll know okay one foot two feet so if you have to measure something that's two foot four and three quarters it's two feet one two three four and then three quarters so from here to that two foot mark so starting at the zero the little mini ruler where you can measure inches is one one side and then the feet come through the center and on this side here's one foot which is here and you can see there's the one on that mark here's another foot and there's the two on that mark so from this side one foot two feet so let's rotate now and look at the side of the scale that has the one inch and the half inch so as you can see one end is twice the size of the other end that's why they can share the markings even though the numbers aren't the same but so on the one inch end of the scale it's marked like the other ones we've looked at so three inches six inches nine inches 12 inches in between the three the longest line divides that space into three equal parts so each of these is one inch if you look at the next longest line it divides one inch in half so each of these spaces is one half inch and then it divides the half inch again with the shortest line so it's half of a half which is a quarter so each of the line each of the spaces on this scale is a quarter of an inch so you have to sort of have your widths about you and start from the overall ruler how big is one inch how big is a half inch how big is a quarter of an inch because the smaller you get the less you can't measure to the eighth inch on this big scale each of these marks is an eighth of an inch that's a that's a tiny increment in real size but on the one inch scale you can only measure down to the quarter inch that's what the marks are so if you have an eighth inch mark you can put it halfway in between two of the little spaces here but that's the little mini ruler and you can see again one foot two feet three feet four feet the numbers that line up with the zero and on the opposite end now it's getting so small that we can't they don't they can't put numbers on here anymore so from the zero to the end of the ruler we know that's 12 inches the longest lines that are here divide that 12 inches into four equal parts which means each of these spaces is three inches so even though the number three six and nine are not given here that's what these lines are so if we look within here if it's three inches then these two next longest lines divide this into three equal spaces so each of those spaces is one inch and if you the next uh the next lines divide the one inch in half so each of these spaces on this scale are half an inch so if you need to measure one foot nine and a half you can mark it there so again if you needed you know from zero two feet that means this mark is one foot so if i have to measure three feet i'm gonna go two three so this is three feet and plus however many inches or fractions of inches and so every side of the scale works the same way here's the quarter inch equals a foot scale you can turn it around so it's not upside down so from the zero that's one foot so you can see one foot two feet three feet four feet and within this space of the mini ruler it's 12 inches so each of these spaces is 3 inches because if you divide 12 into 4 spaces 4 equal parts it's 3 inches so this space is 3 inches and if you look at the smallest marks there are three spaces which means at this scale each mark is one inch wide so you can't show a whole lot of detail at this smaller scale that's one inch as opposed to this very large scale where each of these in an eighth of an inch so one inch is this big and an eighth of an inch is pretty big and legible so the reason we have larger scales and smaller scales is that you can show a lot more detail using a larger scale and when you don't need to show as much detail for more overall general kind of floor plans and things like that you can use a smaller scale and then you might blow things up at a bigger scale when you want to show additional information additional detail so that's the quarter inch side and if now we go to the eighth inch side and maybe this is the last side of the scale i'm going to show you right now but this is the little mini ruler in this case there's a single mark in the center which means from the zero to that single mark that's six inches if i look at how many spaces are within the six inches there are three spaces which means each of these spaces at the eighth inch scale is two inches so if you count them up two four six 8 10 12. so you've got the 12 inches so you need to figure out every time you're drawing at a new scale what where's a foot how big is an inch how big is a half an inch how big is a quarter of an inch and then you get your you sharpen up your pencil and you measure very carefully so um yeah so each time these scales are sharing a side of the ruler it's because they can share the marks again they're not sharing the numbers here the numbers four feet eight feet so if you need five feet four five from the zero and it's really just a matter of keeping your keeping yourself calm and breaking up figuring out every time starting with using the regular foot how big is one foot how big is one inch how big is a half an inch how big is a quarter of an inch how big is an eighth of an inch and so you you start that way with the mini ruler on each side of your scale and you'll be able to make drawings so that you can see um you know something that's 20 feet long is only this wide at quarter inch equals a foot so i could very easily fit a building that's 12 feet by 20 feet at that scale even on the half inch scale here's zero here's 20 feet so a what you know the a house that's that wide could very easily fit on any number of size pieces of paper probably bigger than eight and a half by eleven but you know you can draw and you can get a fair amount of detail at that scale not a huge amount but better than using the eighth inch look how much bigger one foot is there than it is here so again relative to the real size we want to shrink it down so that we can draw it on paper and there are different size scales that are used typically for different types of drawings for instance often an overall building the floor plan of a building might be using quarter inch equivalent foot that's a common scale and then when you want to zoom in and do draw the details of one particular room let's say you're designing your the bedroom and you're choosing furniture for it typically when you're drawing interiors you're going to be using the half inch equals a foot that's the most common scale for interior plans and elevations and other drawing types that we're going to do so we'll be using both quarter inch sometimes mostly half inch but that's the that's a common size and then the inch and a half and three inch which are the ones we started with those larger ones that's often used if you want to do detailing so that's the sort of method for approaching using the scale and now we have a sheet that we're going to do for homework where we are going to be measuring the length of lines so on this on this page there are three lines drawn and each time we have a scale we're going to measure the lines using that scale and we're going to write down the information the the length of the line to the right of it so the way scale is expressed is this way one-eighth inch equals one foot if that's the scale you're using or one-half inch equals one foot not a lot of spaces here and by the way there shouldn't be a dash between the one and the one half this is one and a half inches with no dash it should be written like that that's a typo because when you write feet and inches as you can see are written here you write the foot number the number then feet then a space with a dash and then the inches with the inch mark so they're written differently when you see the equal sign with the number one foot afterward that's always how scale is expressed and when you're expressing a dimension you're going to be writing it this way with the foot and inch mark and by the way notice this one it says one foot zero and one half whenever you have a dimension that's larger than one foot you always need to have a digit in the inch column so you're never going to write one foot one half inch you're always going to write one foot zero and one half because any time it goes above 12 inches which is one foot you have to have a placeholder for the inch column so that it doesn't get misread it's possible that if you don't write this number correctly if you write it as one one foot one half somebody could read that as one foot one it could be misread so it's really important that you always keep a digit in the inch column when the whole number the overall number is larger than one foot you never need a digit in the foot column if it's a zero you never need to have a zero there but you always need to have a digit in the inch column when the number is above 12 inches or one foot so just keeping that in mind both so what what we have here is that the first there's three lines to measure for e with each scale and the first one has the answer written so that you can hold your scale up and really see how the scale works so i'm going to just show you i'll start at the bottom so using the largest scale the way you measure something is to first start out putting the line within the zone of the inches oh sorry opposite you put the zero on the end of the line and you're looking and you're having the zone of the feet there once you see okay it's one foot plus this many inches then what you do you don't mark anything you slide your scale over and now put that foot mark that was the last foot mark before the line ended and now you can simply read and you can read one foot zero and one half because this is one inch so this is still zero inches it's just fractions so it's one foot and one half inch so it's one foot zero and one half now i'll do it up here for the inch and a half length line and again we're going to start with the zero in the zone of the feet and we'll put that at the one end of the line and it doesn't matter which end it all depends on which way your scale is facing so but i want to put that because i want to know how many feet oh this hits exactly at two feet so there's the mini ruler one foot two feet now we're gonna move and use the one inch equals a foot and again i'm going to start with the ruler on the zero with the feet the line showing where the feet are and you can see here's one feet one foot here's two feet so it's one foot plus this many inches so now i know the one foot is my target i'm going to slide the scale over now put the 1 foot mark at this end and then you can simply read so here's 3 6 this is 7 and it's halfway in between 6 and 7 so that's one foot six and a half and that's what it says there so see i'm not i'm not rotating my scale every time i'm just putting the zero on whichever end has the um the feet so now i'm putting the zero here and that line is exactly six feet when you try the other lines the the two lines so you have to do the two lines below the one that's been measured and there's a quotation mark here so all three of these lines are at that scale all three of these lines are at that scale i'll just do one more and then i'm going to talk about the 16th inch scale for a moment so i'm going to do this 3 8 inch line so here's my 3 8 inch equals a foot scale so put the zero so two four feet plus a little bit a few inches so now i slide the scale over and i can just simply read it four feet four inches so in this scale that's 12 inches this is six inches this is three inches so each of these is one inch each space is one inch and i see that that line ends at four it's slightly shorter i might call it four foot three and a half but it's approximately four foot four and by the way when you print this page out make sure you print it actual size or one hundred percent because the length of the lines if you don't print it out full scale you when you hold your scale up to this six foot measurement and look at it and see if if you don't print it at full scale or full size it won't scale properly so then you'll have to redo all of them but you need to print it out actual size so that your answers match my answers that i know you're using the scale properly so i'm going to come up here to the very top now the 1 16 inch equals a foot it doesn't have its own feet and inch markings because it's such a small scale you can imagine if one sixteenth of an inch is one foot how do you put inches and feet inside there little marks it's really impossible so each of these is one foot at one sixteenth inch equals a foot and so if there are if it's 1 16 of an inch there are 16 of these in every foot so if i'm measuring i see that it it's it's covering almost two full inches and it's only half a mark less than the full 16 32 so halfway in between is six inches because that's one foot so the measurement is 16 if you if you if each inch has 16 feet so that would be 32 feet if you subtract 6 inches out of 32 feet you get 31 foot six so you really you can just count all the marks and then you know within each space halfway across is six inches a quarter of the way across is three inches and you'll just get as close as you can to the actual number and i do want you to write down fractions when you see a fraction don't skip it these are not rounded because we don't want to write fractions i actually want you to write and really look carefully to figure out is it a quarter inch an eighth inch you know a three quarters of an inch and i really want you to write down the actual numbers so this is the homework so you'll be measuring the additional lines here and then this is a practice sheet this this is not homework the first sheet this one is homework measuring and scaling the lines to make sure you understand how to read the scale but this is an opportunity to draw lines of a certain length using a certain scale so i'll do one or two of these and then you can practice doing these on your own because the way you use your scale and move it back and forth it's different than when you're measuring something so when we measured remember you started with the line on the zero into the foot into the inch zone then you slid the scale over to the foot and then read the inches when you're drawing a line and i'll do this one that has a fraction at three quarters three quarter inch equals one foot scale so that's this side so i put this line here so that you can begin your lines you're measuring there so just to start with i'm just gonna in this is one of the few cases where drawing a line when you're measuring something to draw using the scale without your other tools just draw yourself a line doesn't have to be dark just so that you can see it and so now it's saying the length of the scale is three quarter inch equals a foot the length of the line is nine foot four and a half so right from the start if you know the length of the line with the fractions and the inches start with the use putting the inches start the line in the inch zone so four and a so here's zero here's four and a half inches so that's the four and a half inches if you already started there then all you have to do is find the nine foot mark and here it is down here so there's the line and get in the habit i'm not asking you to stop the line i just want to see that you can measure so and then when you're finished put your scale down again and do the method here which is check the length of it so i'm going to put it on the zero see how many feet okay it's nine feet plus this many inches now i'll slide the scale over and i can see it's nine foot four and a half so i'll draw one more since i'm on the 3 8 inch side i'll i'll draw this 3 8 inch line 3 8 inch scale the length of the line is 9 foot 8. so again i'm going to put my scale i have to rotate it i have to rotate oh no i'm just going to draw the length of the line sorry so on this side 2 4 6 8 9 here's ten so this is nine feet and then instead of starting with the inches on that side if i start with the feet on that side then all i have to do is come here and count the inches and each of these marks is one inch so here's six seven eight so measuring a line is a little more straightforward because you just you put your scale either on the foot mark or the inch get on the inch so don't mark it twice don't mark nine feet and then move the scale and mark a second time just marcus mark it once because it's very easy to make mistakes you can make a mistake in the first part or in the second part or in both so if you do just the overall by setting your scale properly and then reading the numbers properly it'll be better so this is for you to practice drawing different length lines on scale but this is the one to really understand how to read the scale and again larger this the larger the scale the more detail you can show in your drawing so when you need to if you're custom designing a chair or a table you may want to draw something almost full size if it has a profile so that your your your builder will know exactly what shape you want it to have whereas if you're just drawing a floor plan with a table at the right size a quarter inch floor plan is probably big enough maybe half inch if that's you know if you're really designing the interior so you can see how big and small things are based on how big the mini ruler is so that's one foot that'll be you know each of these zones at the end is the mini ruler that is one foot at that scale that it says on the end so this is just a diagram showing you you know from one scale to another what are the relative sizes of things so what i've done here each of these lines is one foot long at the scale written to its left so you can see 1 16 inch the line is very short that's how big one foot is at 1 16 inch equals a foot you can see how big one foot is at quarter inch equals a foot and each of those lengths matches up to the mini ruler that's on the end but i just wanted to give you this visual diagram so that you really can see wow how much more detail you'd be able to show if one foot is this big rather than this big or this big so you know each scale has its purpose and its reason for being and just because something small doesn't mean it's not accurate you know a 16 inch scale for a site plan when you have a property that's you know 200 feet by 800 feet that's a good scale perhaps if you just need to show the big the big picture but if you want to draw the detail of the column on the porch perhaps it needs to be drawn at a much larger scale so this is just a visual diagram that you have available on on in the module that you can just sort of keep in mind and see how big one foot is at the different scales it's just a useful um visual reference for you but it does match each side matches what that mini ruler is so having this handy is just one more one more piece of information for you to use