Drawing scale
You can choose a preset or custom drawing scale so that distances in a drawing are proportionate to real-world distances. For example, you can specify that 1 inch in the drawing corresponds to 1 meter in the physical world. A preset drawing scale lets you set a typical scale, such as 1:2 or 1:10. A custom drawing scale lets you set any distance on the page to correspond to a real-world distance. For example, you can set a more precise scale that includes decimal numbers, such as 4.5 to 10.6.
When you change the drawing scale, the application automatically adjusts the object size and outline width displayed in the drawing to reflect the new scale representing the world size. The new values displayed are calculated by multiplying the original size by the new scale factor. Below is an example demonstrating how the page distance measurements change as the drawing scale shifts from 1:1 to 1:100. Let's set the scale factor to 1:1 and draw a rectangle of size 50 mm by 100 mm representing a shipping container of size 5 m by 10 m. If we set the scale factor to 1:100, the width and height of the rectangle displayed in the drawing change as follows:
If the document units are set to meters, the rectangle's dimensions will display as 5 m x 10 m. The relationship between scale factor and drawing measurements allows you to maintain precise real-world dimensions in scaled drawings.
Drawing scales are particularly useful if you are creating a technical or architectural drawing with dimension lines. For information about dimension lines, see Connector and callout lines.
To choose a drawing scale
The Edit Scale button does not appear if the ruler’s unit of measure is pixels.
If the drawing scale is set to anything other than 1:1, the units on the vertical ruler are the same as the units on the horizontal ruler.